Abstract

This article starts from the premise that International Political Economy (IPE) literature – with some notable exceptions – has a blind spot for the colonial and contested histories of financial infrastructures. Often considered to be the mere ‘plumbing’ of international finance, financial infrastructures instead are profoundly political and rooted in long-term colonial histories. To start addressing these blind spots, the article draws on literatures in critical infrastructure studies, that offer understandings of infrastructure as lively, contested and profoundly political. The argument is that attending to infrastructure inevitably brings into view the postcolonial nature of contemporary capitalism and finance. The article draws a parallel between the ways in which inequities and dis/connectivities became hard-wired into early modern financial infrastructures, and the ways in which new inequities and disconnections are hard-wired into present-day financial infrastructures through security sanctions. It uses the case of the contemporary payment infrastructure wars, whereby the SWIFT infrastructure is used to enforce sanctions policies, as example to develop the arguments.

摘要

本文从以下前提开始：国际政治经济学（IPE）文献（除某些显着例外）对金融基础设施的殖民历史和争议历史具有盲点。通常被认为只是国际金融的“管道”，金融基础设施具有深远的政治色彩，植根于长期的殖民历史。为了开始解决这些盲点，本文借鉴了关键基础设施研究中的文献，这些文献提供了对基础设施的理解，这些基础设施既生动又充满争议，并且具有深远的政治意义。有人认为，关注基础设施不可避免地要考虑到当代资本主义和金融的后殖民性质。本文在将不平等和不连通性连接到早期的现代金融基础结构的方式与通过安全制裁将新的不平等和断开连接牢固地连接到当今的金融基础结构之间的相似之处。它以当代支付基础设施战争为例，其中SWIFT基础设施用于执行制裁政策，例如提出论据。