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Reason, Carnival and Honour

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What to expect

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.

© Matei Candea 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

Critics Review

An insightful book which makes sense of free speech debates over the past decade. It is 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
A fresh and thought-provoking analysis of what our battles over free speech are really about, and why they are so heated and intractable
Fara Dabhoiwala
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. It is a splendid vindication of anthropology’s capacity to address matters of wide concern in original ways
James Laidlaw
Author Matei Candea
Narrator Matei Candea
Duration 9 hours and 57 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781837311835
Format Audiobook
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Genre Political control and freedoms, Religion and politics, Social and cultural anthropology, Society and culture: general
Availability AU, GB, IE, US

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