This Editors’ Introduction reviews existing literature on ‘leaving’, as well as highlighting how the actual business of exiting a research setting has, by and large, been neglected in accounts of fieldwork. We find this odd, given recent moves toward open and ‘confessional’ forms of methodological writing. We also make a strong case for examining exits as a meaningful stage of the research process, rather than a bookend to it. We provide our own tales of exiting (or not…) our own field sites in order to suggest that the last day can be just as generative of insight as the first. We introduce the chapters across the four sections of the book and, in sum, argue for the need for all ethnographers to experience exits, and the difficulties or impossibilities thereof, as active researchers.

This chapter explores how taxing the traditional livelihood practice of distilling spirits transformed the status of work and traditions, making previously ordinary ways of life illegal, and leading families to weigh their business self-interest against relationships, legal and moral responsibilities, and values. The chapter elucidates the opaque qualities of Istria’s vibrant moonshine market by unpacking the values underpinning it and the relationships between the winemakers, craft distillers, and bootleggers of which it is constituted. Taxing and regulating spirits challenged societal values in ways that forced new considerations into long-standing relationships, particularly around the circulation of the biowaste necessary for distilling. Families sought to maintain livelihoods based on farming, winemaking, and distilling while navigating new regulatory regimes, but those who could not handle such changes retreated from formal business ownership and into the margins of the market. This shift demonstrated that tax can make and unmake markets in sometimes unintended ways. At its core, this chapter illuminates how values in Istrian culture intersect in the practice of distilling and are complicated by the introduction of taxes and regulations.

Tax is both an aspect of everyday life for people round the globe, bound up in political governance, and central to the organisation of our resources and any efforts to promote equality. While tax is studied across multiple disciplines, in anthropology it has received less attention. This introduction argues that an anthropological approach to tax, which centres ethnographic data and non-normative understandings of fiscal relations, is crucial to a comprehensive appreciation of taxes and key to building more equitable futures. The introduction is structured around three main questions: what is tax, what is taxable, and what do taxes do? It maps out why it is important to talk about tax now, the crucial influences of an anthropology of tax, the current landscape of this small but growing field of work, and the future of anthropological approaches to tax.

Trois dé cisions marquantes de la Cour supr e me desÉ tats-Unis– Brown v. Board of Education , 347 U.S. 483 (1954), In re Gault , 387 U.S. 1 (1967), et Michael H. v. Gerald D. , 491 U.S. 110 (1989)– mettent ené vidence les consé quences induites par une analyse jurisprudentielle erroné e des droits de l‘ enfant. Ces aff aires s‘ appuient sur une fausse dichotomie entre le fondement et la substance des droits de l‘ enfant, tant en mati e re civile que pé nale, et dé montrent la né cessité d‘ une interpré tation uniforme des droits constitutionnels de l‘ enfant qui serait centré e sur l‘ enfant en lien avec lesé lé ments dé coulant de la jurisprudence relative au Quatorzi e me Amendement. Pour construire ce syst e me centré sur l‘ enfant, il est né cessaire de reconnaî tre l‘ absence de prise en compte des droits de l‘ enfant dans sa vie quotidienne au sein de son foyer, de l‘é cole eté galement devant les tribunaux pour mineurs. Il s‘ agit de trois domaines distincts dans lesquels la Cour a permis des avancé es jurisprudentielles vers une reconnaissance des droits constitutionnels de l‘ enfant, mais a ensuite battu en retraite, laissant les droits de l‘ enfant insuffisamment proté gé s et pié gé s sous un plafond de verre lié a sonâ ge. L‘ incapacité de la Cour aé laborer un syst e me complet de protection constitutionnelle, c‘ est- a -dire fonctionnant dans ces trois domaines, conduit a des ré sultats qui ne sont pas centré s sur les droits de l‘ enfant ou qui ne les respectent pas.