Anthropology and Tax

From the perspectives of individual taxpayers to international tax norm negotiators, the anthropologists in this collection explore how taxes shape our world: our social relationships and value regimes, how we exclude and include, the categories we think with, and the way we share with each other. A first of its kind, it presents an anthropological discussion about tax rooted in ethnographic work. It asks fundamental questions such as: what is tax, what is taxable, and what do taxes do? By forwarding multiple perspectives from around the world about fiscal systems and how they are experienced and constituted, Anthropology and Tax reconceptualises tax in society. In doing so, this volume makes an incisive intervention in what might be one of the most important debates of our time – that of fiscal sociality. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Johanna Mugler (Research Associate, University of Bern) has authored Measuring Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2019), and co-edited A World of Indicators (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Her research has been funded by the Max Planck Society, the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Berne University Research Foundation. She earned the Caroline von Humboldt Award (2021) for her work on the creation of transnational economic and fiscal norms.

Miranda Sheild Johansson (UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Future Leaders Fellow, University College London) has co-edited the Special Issue ‘An Anthropology of the Social Contract’ (Critique of Anthropology, 2022), authored ‘Tax’ (Open Encyclopaedia of Anthropology, 2020), and co-founded the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) Tax Network. Her research has been funded by the UKRI, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and the Leverhulme Trust.

Robin Smith (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow, Copenhagen Business School) co-edited Beyond the Social Contract: An Anthropology of Tax (Berghahn Books, 2023) and Utopia and Neoliberalism: Ethnographies of Rural Spaces (Lit Verlag, 2018). She has earned research fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Clarendon Fund, and the Independent Social Research Foundation. She founded the Anthropology of Tax Network.