Towards a Network Ontology of Capital and Empire: A Geographical Analysis of the Global Corporate Ownership Network

Albina Gibadullina, University of British Columbia
Luke Bergmann, University of British Columbia, Geography Department

With the recent ascent of US asset managers alongside turbulence and challenges within the capitalist world system, is there a corresponding shift in the operations, logics, and imperatives of global capital? This study aims to theoretically explicate how a network ontology could be generative in understanding the institutional structures through which politico-economic hegemony is (re)produced and/or challenged by providing a multiscale geographical, sectoral, and firm-level analysis of the global corporate ownership network. Our study employs a series of network analysis techniques to examine the meso-level structure of an extensive corporate ownership dataset (provided by the Orbis database) featuring 4.9 million unique shareholders of 2.2 million publicly-traded and privately-owned firms around the world. First, we examine the geographical structure of the global corporate network and discuss the ways in which past concepts of interdependent inequality and polarization, such as notions of core-periphery, may or may not be relevant today. Secondly, we explore the flows of capital between various sectors of the global economy with a particular emphasis on the position of financial firms as key shareholder nodes. Finally, via blockmodeling, we examine the different roles firms, sectors, and countries play within global corporate networks. Through the analysis of the variegated geographies of transnational capital flows, the paper aims to highlight the theoretical value of relational and network-based studies of structures that foster unequal power relations and geographical uneven development.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 207. Global Connections of Class