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.