Reason, Carnival and Honour

Richly provocative … an important book that will open shuttered minds * Telegraph *
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
A book like no other on free speech, Candea deftly sidesteps polarised debates, bringing an anthropologist’s eye to what people really mean and, in doing so, offers fresh, illuminating ways to understand ourselves and one another – Alpa Shah

Matei Candea is a professor of social anthropology at the University of Cambridge. He has 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.

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