Abstract
How can one study the flows of global capital with a focus on people instead of numbers? This is the main driver behind sociologist Kimberly Kay Hoang’s latest book, Spiderweb Capitalism: How global elites exploit frontier markets (2022). Following her success with the book on sex work in Vietnam and global capitalism, titled ‘Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work’ (Hoang, 2015), Hoang dives into the intricacies of global capitalism operating in frontier markets. Similar to her previous ethnographic study, where she worked as a hostess to be closer to the phenomenon she analyses, she begins this project as a personal assistant for two CEOs in Vietnam to gain access primarily to the middlemen securing investment deals between ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWI) and their extensions. In addition to detailed ethnographic accounts, with significant funding and support from colleagues and students, Hoang conducted 302 interviews to reveal how capital operates globally, particularly in markets with weaker regulations, informal institutions, and higher perceived risks, which yield higher returns.
The book comprises seven chapters and an introduction, conclusion and methodological appendix. Throughout the book, Hoang illustrates how elites and their local extensions weave a complex web that privileges and favours the wealthy, whom she calls the ‘Dominant Spiders’, at the expense of others. She takes us on a journey primarily in Vietnam and Myanmar, the frontier markets with lax regulations, and shows capital accumulation through the grey areas of investment in these countries.
As Hoang introduces the metaphor of the Spiderweb, with dominant spiders (UNHWI) and subordinate spiders (HNWI) involved in weaving it from multiple ends at a global level (chapter one), the reader enters a male-dominated and high-end economic environment where legal and illegal practices intertwine. From reaching out to capital owners seeking higher returns to presenting pristine lands for real estate development investment with the purpose of sourcing deals (chapter two), and operating on a continuum of corruption, we learn how local middlemen – whether brokers, legal advisors, accountants or investors – secure investments, often with the (in)visible permissions of officials (chapter three). As global elites transfer their risks to middlemen through high-end service purchases, the middlemen shoulder all the risks onshore while navigating illicit practices in exchange for handsome fees. In such a process, Hoang also shows how middle-‘men’ can inevitably be part of gendered and masculine homoerotic bonding, potentially leading to mutual capture of the actors involved in late-night outs, followed by (sex) parties. The book is not solely focused on how investments are sourced; it also delves into specific details of sustaining these investments in various forms. As local businesses grow, we observe how their tax strategies evolve from evasion to avoidance and ultimately to a position of negotiation regarding tax certainties with the state (chapter four). Hoang not only presents the details of such shady practices, but also tells how the dominant spiders (UHNWI) and their extensions can easily become untraceable or invisible at the pyramids of onshore and offshore shell companies and various (inter)national legislations, creating a shield (chapter five). Amid all the grey areas, we are also informed through rich interview data how these actors morally accept what they do and develop justifications on the grounds of gendered relations, masculinity, familial sacrifices, hardline separation of geographies of operations and how far a person can push himself morally (chapter six). Like introducing the start of investments entangled within the web of capital, Hoang informs the reader how such investments either end with feast, with higher returns or with famines, through sabotages of the local authorities; each time referring to the psychological toll both happy and bad endings take from the involved actors (chapter seven).
In conclusion, Hoang addresses the issue as a systemic problem, as the recurrence of scandals becomes evident through the Pandora Papers or Panama Papers, revealing the massive spiderwebs and lack of legal consequences. After depicting the nitty gritty details of capitalist development in the grey, Hoang rightly asks, Who can regulate the regulators, while some political powers already intertwine with economic powers? In conversation with other scholars and experts, Hoang believes in thinking outside the box and a ‘global network of movements, organisations, and research aimed at trying to reconstitute the relationships between peoples and nation-states and their relationship to land and capital’ (p. 216). She highlights how the actions of the dominant spiders immediately impact the everyday lives of people with no power, as well as the consequences that become visible through poverty, climate catastrophes and outmigration. As a final proposal, acknowledging the massive scale of the systemic issue, she calls for a creative, interdisciplinary, and collective effort to unravel these webs with a vision of balance between government, markets and civil society. Otherwise, as she rightly ends her book, ‘after all, those who do not have the financial power or resources to build their own webs are, in this tangled system, ultimately prey’ (p. 221).
Throughout the book, many interesting and striking anecdotes, comments and observations reveal the unknowns of the Spiderweb Capitalism. For instance, the layered levels of UHNWI and HNWI compared to dominant spiders and how they aspire to become a dominant one, or the shocking amounts of wealth and investments (i.e. capital) concentrated with economic elites, or the very refined tactics and strategies interwoven around specific gifts such as Hermes bags to bribe officials, or how the ‘United States is the easiest place in the world to set up an anonymous shell company’ (p. 213). Hoang provides us with a fascinating ethnographic journey across cities, countries, pristine lands, premium restaurants, ultra-luxury offices, and, of course, people involved in various phases, levels and scales of the ‘Spiderweb’. This journey prompts us to note how the global North-South binary, the legal-illegal continuum and the distinction between licit and illicit practices fade away as capital binds various ends for its accumulation.
What does all this mean for readers of Organization? There are a couple of entry points for critical scholars of organisation and organising. The first concerns the role of elites and, more importantly, how capital operates through informality, relationships and in the grey areas, and the implications this has from a global power relations perspective. As an alternative to a Global North perspective, which presumably operates based on certain institutional norms and regulations, Hoang argues that global capitalism functions as a webbed market, transcending the classifications of North-South or developed-developing markets. While capital primarily accumulates through dispossession (via unpaid taxes, land appropriation, privatisation; Harvey, 2003), we note how the state facilitates this process and how other market forces attempt to secure their share. Therefore, the book can also be viewed as a commentary on how capital not only exploits but also drives illicit activities for further accumulation, with its innovative and diverse forms of organisational networks such as shell companies, consultancy firms and hybrid investment bodies. While this notion is not new, considering the dark side of capitalist development, which is reliant on violence, colonialism, exploitation and extractivism (Fraser, 2022), we are introduced to the financial aspects of the process and the role of people in it, most of which remain behind closed doors.
More specifically, the book sheds light on the organising capacity of capital unless it is limited or regulated. This brings us back, to some extent, to the discussion of globalisation and an uncontrolled/unregulated global economy. History has shown that this process primarily benefited the wealthy, helping to expand capital’s access to more markets and products. It is disheartening to see how the ordinary citizen remains powerless in the face of global capital, where governments take a prominent position alongside and support capital, with the false hope that it will benefit all. Hence, we see another business and society relationship case in which capital reigns over society through its sophisticated practices while offering relatively marginal gains to those involved. In contrast, the big spiders continue to grow at the expense of the others (according to Hoang, the prey). From this perspective, one can advocate for more inclusive and robust institutions to foster democratic capitalist development (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012). Nevertheless, Hoang emphasises how capitalist development takes place in grey areas, including the Western world with its relatively established institutions, arguably depicting the motive of capital accumulation that transcends borders, rules, regulations and morality. With Spiderweb Capitalism, Hoang draws a complex picture in which the state inevitably complies with capitalist imposition and relies on its false-promised development, which primarily benefits the emerging middle class, getting its share from such accumulation.
The third one is about the ethnographic method that is ‘scaled up’, which constructs a story of capital flow around hundreds of actors and multiple countries, cities and spaces. As detailed in the appendix, which can be recommended reading for any qualitative research methods course, Hoang describes the burdensome process of data collection and analysis against the background of significant methodological discussions about legality, the transparency of the research, and the positionality and identity of the researcher. The account by Hoang on the gendered and paradoxical nature of such research, as well as the challenges she faced, is noteworthy. As a female professor from a prestigious university and a female in a male-dominated field where homosocial bonding is essential, her experiences are particularly notable.
With the risks of bias, and given my interest in critical political economy, I note a missed opportunity further to theorise capital in conversation with Marx and his followers. Referring to global financial capitalism and the role of capital accumulation through the dominant spiders, further reflection on capital’s changing and sophisticated operation through mediating and commodifying informality would enrich the book. Following the same argument, colonialism and its legacy in facilitating corruption and poverty could also be further emphasised, along with legal institutions and governing bodies becoming instruments of the capital. This critique also applies to the conclusion section, looking into some policy implications with the expectations of a greater balance between the state, market and society, leaving the reader with the question of a strategic outlook; given the historically unbalanced power relations, with which means are we supposed to reach a greater balance at nation-state and global levels? Or, from a more critical point of view, should we not have more radical alternatives to how (financial) capital operates (see also Alakavuklar and Zanoni, 2025)? Among them, we can refer to degrowth, which proposes scaling down financial industries (Schmelzer et al., 2022), or other alternatives that suggest social power over economic power in organising our societies (Wright, 2013).
Overall, this is an extremely rich ethnographic account of capital’s corrupt and normalised behaviour globally, leading to critical questions of regulation and whether this is possible. While the literature on alternatives is growing with more concrete proposals and cases in the face of climate change, increasing socio-economic inequalities and ecological degradation, the uncontrollable nature of the beast is worrying if we want to transform our economies for a socially just and ecologically sustainable world.
