My Tax Dollars with Ruth Braunstein

In this edition of Speaking of Solidarity, we interview Ruth Braunstein about her new book My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying.In this book, Braunstein maps the contested moral landscape in which Americans experience and make sense of the tax system. Braunstein tells the stories of Americans who view taxpaying as more than a mundane chore: antigovernment tax defiers who challenge the legitimacy of the tax system, antiwar activists who resist the use of their taxes to fund war, antiabortion activists against “taxpayer funded abortions,” and a diverse group of people who promote taxpaying as a moral good. Going beyond the usual focus on tax policy, Braunstein’s innovative view of taxation through the lens of cultural sociology shows how citizens in value-diverse societies coalesce around shared visions of the sacred and fears of the profane.Ruth Braunstein is SNF Agora Institute Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University, and host of When The Wolves Came: Evangelicals Resisting Extremism, a new documentary podcast spotlighting evangelical leaders who are resisting political extremism in their church and the country. A cultural sociologist interested in the role of religion and morality in American political life, Ruth’s award-winning research has been published in the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Cultural Sociology, Contexts, the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Political Power and Social Theory, Sociology of Religion, Theory and Society, and Qualitative Sociology, among other outlets. She is also the author of Prophets and Patriots: Faith in Democracy Across the Political Divide and co-editor of Religion and Progressive Activism: New Stories About Faith and Politics.