Engendering Global Capital: How Homoerotic Triangles Facilitate Foreign Investments into Risky Markets

Abstract

Engaging with the work of C. Wright Mills and Eve Sedgwick, in this article I theorize how homoerotic relations facilitate the flow of global capital into risky market economies. Drawing on interview data with more than 60 financial professionals managing foreign investments in Vietnam, I examine the co-constitution of gender and global capital by identifying three categories of deal brokers. System maintainers are men and women who accept that women’s bodies are necessary for male homosocial bonding between political and economic elites. System transformers are men and women who disrupt the status quo and develop alternative ways of deal brokering outside of erotic spaces. System defectors are those break the triangle altogether and work to create new markets.