Product Description
Reason, Carnival and Honour
Author(s): Matei Candea
Format: Hardback
An Anthropology of Free Speech
What does free speech really mean? How does our understanding of it differ around the world? Why does it divide us - and how can we find common ground?
What free speech really means is hotly contested. Is it increasingly under attack in our democracies, or is it being weaponized by the powerful? These debates don't just happen in the news: they divide families, strain relationships. This is because, anthropologist Matei Candea shows, arguments about free speech are not just about abstract principles: they question what it means to be a good person, to have empathy and courage. They involve fears for the future and longings for the past - and they demand that you pick a side, right now!
In order to move away from the simple binaries of polarised debate, Candea shows us that we need to start counting to three. Deploying the power of thinking anthropologically, Reason, Carnival and Honour outlines three visions of free speech - Reason, or civil rational debate; Carnival, or the right to be outrageous; and Honour, the duty to stand by one's word. Sometimes supporting each other and sometimes at odds, they entail very different understandings of what language is and does, of what it means to be free.
Building on years of research and an exploration of anthropological literature from around the globe - from tales of French cartoonists to Egyptian Bedouin women, Finnish talk-show hosts to Tibetan Buddhist monks - Reason, Carnival and Honour reveals a richer landscape of differences, to help us find new alliances and even answers to the question of what it is we're really arguing about.
About the Author
Matei Candea is a professor of social anthropology at the University of Cambridge, with an international record of publication in the fields of anthropology, social studies of science and the history of ideas. From 2016 to 2021, he led an international research project on the anthropology of free speech, called Risking Speech, funded by the European Research Council. Reason, Carnival and Honour is his first trade book.
For custom orders and quotes: shop@schoolspace.co.za
© 2026 Schoolspace. This product description is the exclusive intellectual property of the publisher, protected under copyright law. Unauthorized use, adaption, or copying is strictly prohibited.
