Globalization as It Happens: On Globalizing Assemblages in Tax Planning

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    Abstract

    Globalization is usually understood as a structural, epochal condition altering the
    environment in which people, organizations, and societies operate. But such
    accounts offer little insight into the infrastructures, practices, and connections
    that facilitate the production of the global. This article uses findings from an
    ethnographic study of tax planning to show how mundane practices and
    connectivities forge and organize global operations, and to argue for the value of
    analyzing processes of globalization in terms of assemblages and infrastructures.
    Empirically, the article captures how the making of ‘tax structures’ involves
    connecting, for instance, buildings in France, a human in Switzerland, a company
    in Denmark, various tax laws, a trust fund in New Zealand, and large amounts of
    money on the move. If studied along the lines of an analytics of ‘globalizing
    assemblages’, such financial objects can help us capture how the global is
    produced and navigated in finance and beyond. By engaging with these questions,
    the article contributes conceptually, methodologically, and empirically to current
    attempts at rethinking globalization, and provides novel insights into the
    practices and entanglements involved in globalized and globalizing financial
    activities.
    OriginalsprogEngelsk
    TidsskriftDistinktion
    Vol/bind13
    Udgave nummer3
    Sider (fra-til)295–309
    ISSN1600-910X
    DOI
    StatusUdgivet - dec. 2012

    Emneord

    • Assemblages
    • Ethnography
    • Financial objects
    • Globalization
    • Infrastructures
    • Practices
    • Tax

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