Freedoms of Speech
Anthropological Perspectives on Language, Ethics, and Power
Published on 18. February 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
478 pages
978-1-4875-4884-1 (ISBN)
Description
Bringing together leading anthropologists, this collection sheds light on the vast topic of freedoms of speech from a comparatively human perspective. 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.
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.
Reviews / Votes
"Freedom of speech, recently a major object of debate, has been discussed mostly in its negative forms of silencing within Western societies. Bringing together an exceptional company of anthropologists, Freedoms of Speech explores it, in contrast, through the multiplicity of its expressions across times and cultures, thus offering a ground-breaking reflection on language, ethics, and politics." -- Didier Fassin, Professor, College de France and the Institute for Advanced Study "This book represents anthropology at its best: comparative, counterintuitive, and theoretically sophisticated yet grounded in fieldwork. As the parochiality of any single conception of freedom of speech is exposed, we see a new and urgent sub-field emerging-and one that speaks also to historians, philosophers, and political scientists." -- Simon Coleman, Chancellor Jackman Professor of Religion, University of TorontoMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Toronto
Canada
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 228 mm
Width: 151 mm
Thickness: 29 mm
Weight
694 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4875-4884-1 (9781487548841)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Matei Candea is a professor of social anthropology at the University of Cambridge.
Taras Fedirko is a lecturer in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow.
Paolo Heywood is an assistant professor of social anthropology at Durham University.
Fiona Wright is a research fellow at the Advanced Care Research Centre at the University of Edinburgh.
Taras Fedirko is a lecturer in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow.
Paolo Heywood is an assistant professor of social anthropology at Durham University.
Fiona Wright is a research fellow at the Advanced Care Research Centre at the University of Edinburgh.
Content
Introduction: Anthropologies of Free Speech
Part I: Traditions and Comparisons
1. Comparing Freedoms: "Liberal Freedom of Speech" in Frontal and Lateral Perspective
2. When Speech Isn't Free: Varieties of Metapragmatic Struggle
3. Speaking for Oneself: Language Reform and the Confucian Legacy in Late Colonial Vietnam
4. Risking Speech in Islam
5. Ten-and-a-Half Seconds of God's Silence: Mormon Parrhesia in the Time of Donald Trump
6. Fascism, Real or Stuffed: Ordinary Scepticism at Mussolini's Grave
7. The Imaginative Power of Language in the Vacated Space of "Free Speech" in Putin-Era Russia
Part II: Extending the Politics of Free Speech
8. Designing Limits on Public Speaking: The Case of Hungary
9. Expression Is Transaction: Talk, Freedom, and Authority When Egalitarians Embrace the State
10. Dissent, Hierarchy, and Value Creation: Liberalism and the Problem of Critique
11. The People's Radio between Populism and Bullshit
12. Environments for Expression on Palestine: Fields, Fear, and the Politics of Movement
Part III: Narrating, Witnessing, Troubling
13. Freedom of Speech in Jeju Shamanism
14. Truth of War: Immersive Fiction Reading and Public Modes of Remembrance in an English Literary Society
15. As It Were: Narrative Struggles, Historiopraxy, and the Stakes of the Future in the Documentation of the Syrian Uprising
16. Age of Saturn: Art, Parafiction, Censorship, and the Contested History of Bangladesh
Part IV: Therapies, Individual and Collective
17. Free Speech, without Listening? Liberalism and the Problem of Reception
18. An American Canard: Carl Rogers, B.F. Skinner, and the Freedom of (Therapeutic) Speech
19. Therapeutic Politics and the Performance of Reparation: A Dialogical Approach to Mental Health Care in the UK
20. Secret Censors: Scandals of Sexuality in Global/Indian Publics
Bibliography
Index
Part I: Traditions and Comparisons
1. Comparing Freedoms: "Liberal Freedom of Speech" in Frontal and Lateral Perspective
2. When Speech Isn't Free: Varieties of Metapragmatic Struggle
3. Speaking for Oneself: Language Reform and the Confucian Legacy in Late Colonial Vietnam
4. Risking Speech in Islam
5. Ten-and-a-Half Seconds of God's Silence: Mormon Parrhesia in the Time of Donald Trump
6. Fascism, Real or Stuffed: Ordinary Scepticism at Mussolini's Grave
7. The Imaginative Power of Language in the Vacated Space of "Free Speech" in Putin-Era Russia
Part II: Extending the Politics of Free Speech
8. Designing Limits on Public Speaking: The Case of Hungary
9. Expression Is Transaction: Talk, Freedom, and Authority When Egalitarians Embrace the State
10. Dissent, Hierarchy, and Value Creation: Liberalism and the Problem of Critique
11. The People's Radio between Populism and Bullshit
12. Environments for Expression on Palestine: Fields, Fear, and the Politics of Movement
Part III: Narrating, Witnessing, Troubling
13. Freedom of Speech in Jeju Shamanism
14. Truth of War: Immersive Fiction Reading and Public Modes of Remembrance in an English Literary Society
15. As It Were: Narrative Struggles, Historiopraxy, and the Stakes of the Future in the Documentation of the Syrian Uprising
16. Age of Saturn: Art, Parafiction, Censorship, and the Contested History of Bangladesh
Part IV: Therapies, Individual and Collective
17. Free Speech, without Listening? Liberalism and the Problem of Reception
18. An American Canard: Carl Rogers, B.F. Skinner, and the Freedom of (Therapeutic) Speech
19. Therapeutic Politics and the Performance of Reparation: A Dialogical Approach to Mental Health Care in the UK
20. Secret Censors: Scandals of Sexuality in Global/Indian Publics
Bibliography
Index