Financial platforms are generally seen as the basic infrastructure of platform capitalism. They are therefore taken to be the basis for the exercise of ‘infrastructural power.’ The latter transpires through the incorporation of digital technologies and algorithmic operations into the heart of economic and financial practices. However, different assumptions are made about the effects of digital platforms and infrastructures depending on geographical location.

For example, financial platforms are approached as inherent to processes of financialization on a global scale and are generally seen as the basic infrastructure of platform capitalism. They are therefore taken to be the basis for exercise of ‘infrastructural power.’ The latter transpires through the incorporation of digital technologies and algorithmic operations into the heart of economic and financial practices. However, different assumptions are made about the effects of digital platforms and infrastructures depending on geographical location. For example, while financial platforms are approached as inherent to processes of financialization on a global scale, they are reduced to processes of financial inclusion when referencing the ‘Global South.’ Analyses of financialization as a one-way-vector – Global North to Global South – overlook the variability, the limits, and responses to financialization. In contrast, a focus on market devices illustrates the specificities of value creation via digital platforms.

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Janet Roitman is a Professor at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. She is the founderdirector of The Platform Economies Research Network (PERN) and an Associate Investigator at the ARC Centre
of Excellence for Automated Decision-making and Society (ADM+S) at RMIT University. She serves on the Council of Advisors for the Platform Cooperativism Consortium. Her research focuses on financial practices, digital technologies, and emergent forms of value. She is the author of Fiscal Disobedience: An Anthropology of Economic Regulation in Central Africa (Princeton University Press) and Anti-Crisis (Duke University Press).

Professor Roitman serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Cultural Economy, Cultural Anthropology, Finance & Society, and Platforms & Society. Her research has received funding support from the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the United States Social Science Research Council, Agence française du développement, The Institute for Public Knowledge, and the United States National Science Foundation.