Toward an IPE of raced finance

International Political Economy (IPE) as a discipline increasingly acknowledges the significance of racial oppression and inequalities. Yet, these are often seen as separate from, or coinciding with, financial hierarchies and power structures. There is some understanding that race may shape how finance works, but this does not factor into what IPE scholars called the structural power of finance. By contrast, we suggest that hierarchies of race and finance may be more intimate, integral, and co-constitutive than this position suggested. We call this conceptual hypothesis ‘raced finance’. Raced finance encourages us to ask: How, exactly, is finance ‘raced’, and why is this the case? With what consequences for our understandings of race, finance, and capitalism? After offering a conceptual definition, we map out historical and contemporary arguments on raced finance in IPE and beyond, across three thematic categories: (1) race, empire, and primitive accumulation via financial means; (2) raced global monetary orders; (3) financial risks and racialized anxieties. We then further develop our raced finance analytic as a frame for the special issue and future IPE research. We submit that raced finance can be productively grasped in terms of three constitutive tensions: inclusion/exclusion, totalization/differentiation, and stabilization/destabilization. The combination of these three dialectical tensions is what makes raced finance such a potent force. We conclude by offering reflections on teaching race and finance in IPE. Giving due attention to race in the IPE of finance may require rethinking pedagogical priorities, shifting empirical angles, adopting new geographical foci, mobilizing new theories, and reconstructing periodizations.