Introduction: theorizing semi-peripheral geographies of finance and banking

Abstract

This edited collection explores the boundaries between political and financial geographies: it interrogates linkages between the changing spatialities and policies of the state, the evolution of a globalizing financial system, and the consequences of this for people and firms. Empirically, it focuses on the semi-periphery of the financial system to generate new perspectives on the entanglement between (geo)politics and finance: these complement and overlap with the core-centered analyses of what has come to be an Anglo-American geography of finance. Conceptually, it engages with insights from a variety of disciplines in order to explore the connections between geopolitical and geo-economic discourses, public finance and foreign policy, the practices and localization of financial institutions, and the evolution of strategies for globalizing firms. Such topics are becoming increasingly relevant, as evidenced in a speech by the UK Deputy Governor for Prudential Regulation in which the term 'geofinance' is presented as a dynamic to acknowledge the 'impact of geography on the shape of banks, insurers and financial regulation. .. With the revolution in regulation following the financial crisis coming to its end, and with changes to the geopolitical landscape looming large'. He observed that geofinance will be 'the defining challenge of the next few years' (Woods 2017). The chapters in this book explore trends, data, policies and geographies in Bulgaria, Brazil, Italy, Pakistan, Russia, Turkey and Vietnam. In addition, they offer crosscountry analyses for Central and Eastern Europe, and examine the evolutionary patterns of international financial institutions and other supranational financial players. All this has resulted in a complex web of relationships between governments and actors in finance which has, in turn, had an impact on firms as well as households (Figure I.1). Taken together, these are under-represented locations in the geography of finance: the focus on these underpins the originality of this