Anthropology and Tax

Johanna Mugler (Research Associate, University of Bern) authored Measuring Justice (CUP, 2019), and co-edited A World of Indicators (CUP, 2015). She is currently writing Sharing Global Profits: Negotiating Tax Expertise, Value and Advantage at the OECD. She earned the Caroline von Humboldt Award for research on international tax norms (2021). Miranda Sheild Johansson (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 EASA Tax Network. Her research has been funded by the UKRI, ESRC, and Leverhulme Trust. Robin Smith (Marie Curie Fellow, Copenhagen Business School) co-edited Beyond the Social Contract: An Anthropology of Tax (Social Analysis, 2020). She has earned research fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, Wenner-Gren Foundation, Clarendon Fund, and the Independent Social Research Foundation. She founded the Anthropology of Tax Network.

'Anthropology and tax? But of course! Fiscal questions are, after all, moral ones, and taxes are that peculiar and ancient form of payment stitching peoples to polities, remaking value, subjecthood, citizenship and state in the process. This compelling volume brings together contributions reflecting the crucial insights that deep, ethnographic work on tax relations can yield, including inquiry into the very nature of wealth, governance, recognition, rights, and redemption. With cases spanning the globe, it provides a fantastic starting point for anyone hoping to gain a richer understanding of the one constant in life-besides death-and the machinations of both states and their subjects to evade both death and taxes.' Bill Maurer, Professor of Anthropology and Law, University of California

• Foreword Janet Roitman; Advancing an Anthropology of tax Johanna Mugler, Miranda Sheild Johansson and Robin Smith; 1. Becoming the good migrant: how Romanian migrants mobilise taxpayer status Dora-Olivia Vicol; 2. The nurturing state: an intimate portrait of becoming a taxpayer in Ghana Anna-Riikka Kauppinen; 3. An ecology of payments: taxes, cuotas, and fees in highland Bolivia Miranda Sheild Johansson; 4. The Persistence of kindred spirits: tax and values in Istrian distilling Robin Smith; 5. Taxation without hegemony: land, fiscal conflicts, and the limits of post-neoliberalism in Ecuador Jeremy Rayner; 6. Gambling away fraud: tax and speculative governance in Slovakia Nicolette Makovicky; 7. Mottos for a more tax-compliant society: strategies, tax compliance research, and fiscal practices at the Swedish tax agency Lotta Björklund Larsen; 8. General knowledge and particular society: taxation as a way of knowing Olly Owen; 9. The colonial debris in the digitalisation of tax in Kenya Nimmo Elmi; 10. Fiscal citizenship, assimilation, and colonial governance in settler states Kyle Willmott; 11. Fundraising in Fiji: taxation, proceduralism, and a moral economy of accountability Matti Eräsaari; 12. Dead zones of tax inspection: the new strategic direction in the Danish tax authority and its consequences for front staff Karen Boll; 13. Tax Havens, commodified citizenship, and the production of home in a globalised world Greg Rawlings; 14. Sharing beyond the state: International Tax Norm Negotiations at the OECD Johanna Mugler.