The growing concern of social scientists and the general public regarding the impacts of the digitalization of financial infrastructures requires more nuanced analysis of patterns of continuity and change that can emanate from interdisciplinary analysis of financial infrastructures. The goal of this mini-conference is to explore the past, present and future of financial infrastructures. We seek contributions exploring themes broadly related to the following questions:

 

• What are financial infrastructures? How are they distinguished from and how do they overlap with other institutions and organizations?
• How do financial infrastructures change? How does digitalization affect the essential functions of infrastructures, such as the exchange of money, in modern societies? Which actors and processes are able to effect change in financial infrastructures?
• How inclusive or exclusive are financial infrastructures? How do they relate to (historical) social inequalities, such as colonial power relations? How are financial infrastructures interlinked with global power structures?
• How do financial infrastructures matter beyond the financial sphere? How do they gain importance for security or for the management of property? How are financial infrastructures interlinked with the process of financialization?

 

This mini-conference will take up these and related questions concerning the agential qualities of infrastructures, as well as regarding the historical and ongoing contemporary development of financial infrastructures in and beyond the dominant Anglo-American centres of finance. Crucially, we seek wider perspectives from beyond the West, including much needed post-colonial and (post-) socialist approaches and findings.