Head of Department Professor Matei Candea publishes “must-read” new book analysing the hotly contested topic of free speech from an anthropological perspective.
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? Professor Matei Candea’s new book, Reason, Carnival and Honour: An Anthropology of Free Speech – recently published by Penguin – builds on years of research and an exploration of anthropological and historical literature from around the globe to offer a fresh perspective on one of today’s most divisive public debates. Candea identifies three competing visions of free speech that underpin many polarised arguments, offering a framework for understanding why people approach the issue from fundamentally different perspectives.
“In my new book,” the Professor of Social Anthropology and Fellow of King's College explains, “I argue that our free speech wars could be seen as a struggle between three main visions, each with its own notion of freedom.” “‘Reason’ envisions the rational exchange of opinions within the law. ‘Carnival’ values free speech as a radical attack on established laws and orthodoxies. ‘Honour’ is concerned with the bravery and honesty of truth-speakers doing their duty.”
None of these visions imagines freedom of speech as entirely unlimited, but the limits they place are different. It is often where the limits of one vision clash with the aspirations of another, that free speech controversies arise. These modes entail very different understandings of what language is and does, of what it means to be free, and of who is speaking to whom.
“The book deploys the power of anthropology to reveal a richer landscape of differences - and potential accommodations - between our partly shared cultures of free speech,” says Candea. “The aim is not to silence free speech debates, but to provide a more accurate, less caricatured sense of what it is we are arguing about, where we really disagree and what is never in question. Such a shared sense could be a prelude to new alliances, or it could be a prelude to a renewed debate. But at least we would not be talking past each other quite so often.”
Reason, Carnival and Honour: An Anthropology of Free Speech is Candea's first trade book, written for a broad audience beyond academia. It builds on 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: An Anthropology of Free Speech (Penguin, 2026) is also available as an audiobook.
Read related pieces by Professor Matei Candea in The Guardian and The Conversation.
Anyone with a serious interest in these debates and controversies will want to read this book, and will find much to admire, provoke, amuse and surprise.
James Laidlaw
... richly provocative … an important book that will open shuttered minds.
Daily Telegraph
A must-read for anyone who wants to take seriously the claims they live by and — just as crucially — the claims of others.
Matthew Engelke