Beyond the Social Contract

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.

Robin Smith is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at Copenhagen Business School's Department of Organization and Academic Guest at Utrecht University's Department of Cultural Anthropology. Her work has benefited from the financial support of the Wenner-Gren Foundation, Independent Social Research Foundation, Clarendon Fund, and American Council of Learned Societies.