Understanding Illiberalism Through Economic Practice: Four Cases

Sarah Muir and Tiana Bakić Hayden

Economic Anthropology, 2026, vol. 13, issue 1

Abstract: This essay introduces a collection of essays on illiberal economies, arenas for paradoxical practices that simultaneously critique but rely upon liberal institutions and norms. Looking across the cases that the essays present, we argue that three themes stand out as especially salient for helping us gain greater analytical purchase on the challenges that contemporary forms of illiberalism pose, both analytically and politically: exclusion and marginalization, affective sociability, and the navigation of contradictions. Taken together, we argue, these three thematics offer avenues for exploring more fully the affordances and limits of contemporary illiberalism, both in its economic guise and more broadly.

Date: 2026
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