Fiscal Disobedience represents a novel approach to the question of
citizenship amid the changing global economy and the fiscal crisis of
the nation-state. Focusing on economic practices in the Chad Basin of
Africa, Janet Roitman combines thorough ethnographic fieldwork with
sophisticated analysis of key ideas of political economy to examine the
contentious nature of fiscal relationships between the state and its
citizens. She argues that citizenship is being redefined through a
renegotiation of the rights and obligations inherent in such economic
relationships.
The book centers on a civil disobedience movement that arose in Cameroon
beginning in 1990 ostensibly to counter state fiscal authority--a
movement dubbed Opération Villes Mortes by the opposition and
incivisme fiscal by the government (which for its part was eager to
suggest that participants were less than legitimate citizens, failing in
their civic duties). Contrary to standard approaches, Roitman examines
this conflict as a "productive moment" that, rather than involving the
outright rejection of regulatory authority, questioned the
intelligibility of its exercise. Although both militarized commercial
networks (associated with such activities trading in contraband goods
including drugs, ivory, and guns) and highly organized gang-based
banditry do challenge state authority, they do not necessarily undermine
state power.
Contrary to depictions of the African state as "weak" or "failed," this
book demonstrates how the state in Africa manages to reconstitute its
authority through networks that have emerged in the interstices of the
state system. It also shows how those networks partake of the same
epistemological grounding as does the state. Indeed, both state and
nonstate practices of governing refer to a common "ethic of illegality,"
which explains how illegal activities are understood as licit or
reasonable conduct.
