Globalization as It Happens: On Globalizing Assemblages in Tax Planning

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.