Tax and taxation are conventionally understood as the embodiment of social contract. This ground-breaking collection of essays challenges this truism, examining what tax might tell us about the limits of social-contract thinking. The contributors shed light on contemporary fiscal structures and public debates about the moralities, practices, and imaginaries of tax systems, using tax to explore the nature of citizenship, personal freedom, and moral and economic value. Their ethnographically grounded accounts show how taxation may be influenced by spaces of fiscal sovereignty that exist outside or alongside the state, taking various forms, from alternative religious communities to economic collectives.
Nicolette Makovicky is Director of Russian and East European Studies at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford. She is the editor of Neoliberalism, Personhood, and Postsocialism: Enterprising Selves in Changing Economies (Routledge, 2014), and co-editor of Slogans: Subjection, Subversion, and the Politics of Neoliberalism (Routledge, 2019).
Introduction: Tax Beyond the Social ContractNicolette Makovicky and Robin SmithChapter 1. Taxes for Independence: Rejecting a Fiscal Model of Reciprocity in Peri-urban BoliviaMiranda Sheild JohanssonChapter 2. God's Delivery State: Taxes, Tithes, and a Rightful Return in Urban GhanaAnna-Riikka KauppinenChapter 3. The Fiscal Commons: Tax Evasion, the State, and Commoning in a Catalonian CooperativeVinzenz Bäumer EscobarChapter 4. Contesting the Social Contract: Tax Reform and Economic Governance in Istria, CroatiaRobin SmithChapter 5. Into and Out of Citizenship, through Personal Tax Payments: Romanian Migrants’ Leveraging of British Self-EmploymentDora-Olivia VicolChapter 6. The Worth of the ‘While’: Time and Taxes in a Finnish TimebankMatti EräsaariAfterword: Putting Together the Anthropology of Tax and the Anthropology of EthicsSoumhya VenkatesanIndex