Book cover for Beyond the Social Contract: An Anthropology of Tax by Nicolette Makovicky and Robin Smith

Beyond the Social Contract

An Anthropology of Tax

2023 Released
163 Pages
4-5 Hours
Ebook Unavailable
Audiobook Unavailable
Berghahn BooksISBN 9781805390428

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

I was appointed Lecturer in Sociology in 2012. I am currently PhD Programme Co-ordinator and convenor of three undergraduate modules. My research and teaching is concerned with the everyday life of urban public spaces. I am interested in, and encourage students to take an interest in, both the street-level politics of city life and the mundane accomplishment of mobility practices and interaction. These themes have been addressed through research on everyday sense-making in regenerated space, practices of street-based welfare and vulnerable urban groups and, most recently, an investigation of co-operative mobility practices. I also have an abiding interest in social science methodology as a topic of inquiry.

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