Nation-states, capital market managers, and sovereignty: An ethnographic case study in Malaysia

This dissertation is an ethnographic investigation of the restructuring of the Malaysian capital market in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, showing how the calculative practices of financial experts intersect with the global financial regime, reformatting relations between subjects so as to create a forceful, indeed compelling scale of value. The ability to determine a forceful scale of value relates directly to how sovereignty, the ability to determine the state of exception, is held only by those networks with strong connections to "core states" which wield power as part of the regime-making "club" in global markets. I argue that an emergent "proto global state" plays an increasingly important role in structuring global financial markets. As developing states seek to engage this order, fund managers -- key agents in developmental projects who are enmeshed in local and global racialized regimes -- arbitrage between local capital regimes and global regimes and are able to mine value. In the case of Malaysia, their work reinforces and extends stratification in global markets. This is demonstrated by tracing the way that the success of the Malaysian state in promulgating growth has come through participation in the ongoing escalation of primitive accumulation and at the price of reinforcing an ongoing racial project of elites in the nation-state. Ethnographic investigation in Malaysia shows that the subjectivity and market making praxis of financial elites in this developing country mimic core country norms and expectations and, further, that the ability to present evidence of conspicuous cosmopolitanism in training, outlook and knowledge is a pre-requisite for success in fund management. The habitus of fund managers and the cycles of arbitraging opportunities engendered by elite networks in Malaysia support the conclusion that as financialization continues to reinforce difference and marginality, even while engaging networks across racial formations, racism will increase in importance among elites in emerging nation states.