Freedoms of Speech: Anthropological Perspectives on Language, Ethics, and Power
Editors: Matei Candea, Taras Fedirko, Paolo Heywood and Fiona Wright
Following a six-year ERC-funded research project on the comparative anthropology of free speech, Matei Candea, Taras Fedirko, Paolo Heywood and Fiona Wright have published a large open-access edited volume entitled Freedoms of Speech: Anthropological Perspectives on Language, Ethics, and Power.
The volume can be freely read and downloaded here: https://www-degruyter-com.ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/document/doi/10.3138/9781487552978/html#contents
Matei Candea discusses free speech, anthropological comparison and the research project in an interview here: https://sites-lsa-umich-edu.ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/cssh/2025/02/22/a-juridical-likeness-matei-candea-discusses-free-speech-lateral-comparison-and-lessons-learned-while-editing/
Freedoms of Speech provides a sustained, empirical exploration of the variety of ways freedom of speech is lived, valued, and contested in practice; envisioned as an ideal; and mediated by various linguistic, ethical, and material forms. From Ireland to India, from Palestine to West Papua, from contemporary Java to early twentieth-century Britain, and from colonial Vietnam to the contemporary United States, the book broadly interrogates the classic vision of a singular “Western liberal tradition” of freedom of speech, exploring its internal complexities and highlighting alternative perspectives on the relationship between speech, freedom, and constraint in other times and places. Chapters analyse subjects commonly linked to freedom-of-speech debates, shedding new light on familiar topics that include campus speech codes, defamation, and press freedom, while also exploring unexpected ones such as therapy, gift-giving, and martyrdom. These analyses not only provide unexpected perspectives and unique insights but also address a myriad of questions, contributing to a rich, interdisciplinary, and human understanding of the nature of freedom of speech. This collection brings together leading anthropologists and fresh new voices in the discipline to consider freedoms of speech with a wide comparative lens.