Introduction: Tax beyond the social contract

Abstract

This special issue decenters tax as an analytic device for understanding the relationship between state and citizen while examin-ing the limits of social contract thinking. Focusing on how citizens inter-pret and react to state efforts to promote fiscal citizenship, it sheds light on contemporary fiscal structures and public debates about the morali-ties, practices, and imaginaries of tax systems. The contributors use tax to explore the nature of citizenship, personal freedom, and moral and economic value. They also highlight how taxation may be influenced by spaces of fiscal sovereignty that exist outside or alongside the state in the form of alternative religious and economic communities.