Description
Book Synopsis 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.
Table of Contents Introduction: Tax Beyond the Social Contract
Nicolette Makovicky and Robin Smith
Chapter 1. Taxes for Independence: Rejecting a Fiscal Model of Reciprocity in Peri-urban Bolivia
Miranda Sheild Johansson
Chapter 2. God's Delivery State: Taxes, Tithes, and a Rightful Return in Urban Ghana
Anna-Riikka Kauppinen
Chapter 3. The Fiscal Commons: Tax Evasion, the State, and Commoning in a Catalonian Cooperative
Vinzenz Bäumer Escobar
Chapter 4. Contesting the Social Contract: Tax Reform and Economic Governance in Istria, Croatia
Robin Smith
Chapter 5. Into and Out of Citizenship, through Personal Tax Payments: Romanian Migrants’ Leveraging of British Self-Employment
Dora-Olivia Vicol
Chapter 6. The Worth of the ‘While’: Time and Taxes in a Finnish Timebank
Matti Eräsaari
Afterword: Putting Together the Anthropology of Tax and the Anthropology of Ethics
Soumhya Venkatesan
Index
