dies in Anthropology Routledge Stu . . . lease visit www.routledge.com For a full list of titles m this senes, p

26 Transpacific Americas t Between the Americas and the South Encounters and Engagemen s

Pacific . . S h h Edited by Eveline Durr and Philipp c ore

27 The Anthropology of Postin~ustrialism Ethnographies of Disconnection Edited by Ismael Vaccaro, Krista Harper and Seth Murray

28 Islam, Standards, and T~chnoscience In Global Halal Zones Johan Fischer

29 After the Crisis Anthropological Thought, Neoliberalism and the Aftermath James G. Carrier

30 Hope and Uncertainty in Contemporary African Migration Edited by Nauja Kleist and Dorte Thorsen

31 Work and Livelihoods in Times of Crisis Edited by Susana Narotzky and Victoria Goddard

32 Anthropology and Alterity Edited by Bernhard Leistle

33 Mixed Race Identities in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands

Edited by Farida Fozdar and Kirsten McGavin

34 Freedom in Practice

Edited by Moises Lino e Silva and Huon Wardle

freed om in Practice Governance, Autonomy and Liberty in the Everyday

Edited by Moises Lino e Silva and Huon Wardle

I~ ~~o~!!!n~~~up LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2017

by Routledge . OX14 4RN 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon

and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is a11 i111pri11t of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa

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© 2017 selection and editorial matter, Moises Lino e Silva and Huon

Wardle; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of Moises Lino e Silva and Huon Wardle to be identified

as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their

individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77

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•

For Joanna Overing

• ►

Contents

Acknowledgements ix

Author bios xi

Introduction: Testing freedom 1

MOISES LINO E SILVA AND HUON WARDLE

1 The inscrutability of freedom and the liberty of a life-project 34

NIGEL RAPPORT

2 Becoming "no one": Muneyoshi Yanagi's theory of

freedom in the figure of the unfree craftsman 54

HIDEKO MITSUI

3 John Brown: Freedom and imposture in the early

twentieth-century trans-Caribbean 63

HUON WARDLE

4 Self-interest and civil society: Freedoms and liberties in

South Italian associationism 87

STAVROULA PIPYROU

5 'Livin' this way': Reading Aboriginal self-determination

through some debates about freedom 101

DIANE AUSTIN -BROOS

6 Jeronimo's declaration of independence: Piro accounts of 121

slavery and freedom

PETER GOW

viii Contents . f s'" - said the drug lord: Queer

7 "Don't mess with my ag . T favela

liberation in a Braz1 ian

MOISES UNO E SILVA

k . . The trouble with freedom in anthropology

g Liberty and loc -tn.

CHRISTOPHER M. KELTY

Index

144

164

187

Acknowledgements

'Freedom' is one th~ most fiercely contested words in contemporary global

experience. Yet durmg the last 50 years, anthropologists have had surpris­

ingly little to say on the topic. As Malinowski pointed out, some of this

reluctance comes down to the 'semantic chaos' that emerges when we try

to determine what freedom actually means in everyday life. With this vol­

ume, the editors, Moises Lino e Silva and Huon Wardle, tackle this problem

and add a more explicit ontological dimension to it. This is done through

the study of eight dramatically different cases of freedom in practice: taken

together, these essays constitute a radical challenge to assumptions about

what constitutes freedom in today's world.

This volume originated in a conference on Freedoms and Liberties in

Anthropological Perspective held at the Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies,

St Andrews University, organised by Wardle and Lino e Silva in June 2013.

The discussion of 'freedom in practice' goes some way further back, though,

in conversations about practical challenges faced by Lino e Silva in address­

ing the issue of 'freedom' in his ethnographic work on the Brazilian favela:

a recurrent question took the form 'is "freedom" a legitimate object of

anthropological study or not? If so, how to approach it? And if not, why

not?' Certainly, freedoms and liberties have been a theme of perennial con­

cern across the humanities and social sciences - philosophy, history and

political science - so anthropology's reticence on the topic is surprising.

Nonetheless, anthropologists such as Boas, Malinowski and Leach have all

written on the topic. Likewise, the works of Overing, Riesman, Lee and

more recently Rapport, Laidlaw, Humphrey and others indicate that if the

concept of freedom has not been understood as pivotal to anthropology as a

kind of inquiry, neither has it ever disappeared from anthropological discus­

sion for long. The aim of bringing a group of anthropologists together to

think about 'freedom' and 'liberty' was, then, to probe this unstable fiel~ for

what it tells us about how the task of anthropology is currently conceived

and understood. For these reasons during the conference and afterwards, we were keen

to examine freedo~s and liberties in their semantic aspect - 'What are

x Acknowledgements

. . f freedom?' - their epistemological aspect _ 'D

the different meanmgs O · k " d oes

I ode of inquiry, demand certam m s of freedo,.,., ~•

anthropo ogy, as a m . d f b" f h h .,., ,

and from the side of ontology- 'What k~n s o _o 1ect o t oug t and action

are freedoms and liberties, and where m. particular do we see them fore­

grounded?' Inevitably, _in par_t, we were dnven by an aware_ness of events of

the previous decade - mc!udmg the expanded use _of surveillance technolo­

gies in Europe, the ~mencan _war against terror (m the name of freedom)

waged in many foreign countnes, and the growth of Pentecostalism with .

emphasis on spiritual liberation in Africa and Latin America. The ex Its

tation of the intellectual project we draw out in this book has been ft· anthropolo?y ":ill bene~t fro~ reas~essing the place of autonomy, freedo~t

self-determmat10n and liberty m their relation to governance at dist· '

I · I I I met ana­

yt1ca eves.

The conference and the book have offered the first attempt£

at a venture of this kind in anthropology, so we are particula~r m;;y ;ears

a!I those who took part, often with great patience he! in y g e ul to

diverse perspectives on offer. In addition to o ' -: g us develop the

Austin-Broas, Peter Go\\( Chris Kelty ffd k ur::i_?nt~1 utors here - Diane

Nigel Rapport - we are 'also indebted t~ e o 1tsu1, Stavroula Pipyrou,

conference - Mauro Almeida Vi oth_ers who gave papers at the

Hall, Mette High Adam Reed eNena ~a_s, Nadia Farage, Tobias Kelly, Alex

th . ' , oa va1sman _ as e h b h .

emes to the discussion In ac roug t important

I · some cases the J

exp ore perspectives on 'freedo ' . h atter group have gone on to

have added important dimensio;:; t~nt~t er venue~ and in every case they

our thanks to all. We are grateful I e ~ms of this collection. So we offer

fies and the Ladislav Holy Trust :oso to t .de _Centre for Cosmopolitan Stud-

rom which th· b k r prov1 mg fund· c h is oo springs. mg 10r t e conference

Author bios

Diane Austin-Broos is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University

· of Sydney. She has pursued extended field research both in Jamaica and in

central Australia. Her research is focussed on religion, colonisation and

change, with an emphasis on subaltern women, race and class. Her books

include Creating Culture (1987), Jamaica Genesis (1997), Arrernte Pre­

sent, Arrernte Past (2009) and A Different Inequality (2011). Her forth­

coming edited collection with Francesca Merlan is People and Change in

Indigenous Australia.

Peter Gow is Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews.

He is the author of several books and numerous articles based on his

fieldwork in Peruvian Amazonia and in Brazil. The books include Of

Mixed Blood: Kinship and History in Peruvian Amazonia (1991) and An

Amazonian Myth and Its History (2001). He also conducts research on

social transformation in the Highlands of Scotland.

Christopher M. Kelty is Professor at the University of California, Los Ange­

les. He has a joint appointment in the Institute for Society and Genetics,

the department of Information Studies and the Department of Anthro­

pology. His work spans anthropology, science and technology studies,

and information and media studies. He is currently at work on a book

about participation and is the author of Two Bits: The Cultural Signifi­

cance of Free Software (Duke University Press, 2008).

Moises Lino e Silva works within the field of political anthropology, special­

izing in the ethnographic study of freedom and authority in relation to

pressing topics such as poverty, violence, sexuality, race and develo~ment.

His first field research was centred on issues of freedom as expenen~ed

by slum dwellers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Recently, he has been focus~g

on the cultivation of Afro-Brazilian power and the place of freedom m

the aftermath of formal slavery. In 2013, Dr Lino e Silva was_ selec~ed a

World Social Science Fellow by UNESCO's International Social Science

Council (ISSC).

xii Author bias . .

. . . I Assistant Professor at the Umvers1ty of .Maca

Hideko Mitsui ,hs Dcur~ent ~hropology (Stanford University). Recent public o.

She holds a P • · 10 an . , 1· • a­

. . 1 d 'Long,·ng for the Other: Traitors Cosmopo 1tamsm', Social

t10ns me u e • • f N · I A

Anthropology 18 (4) (2010); 'The Poht1cs o . at1ona tonement and

Narrations of War', Inter-Asia Cultural ~tu1tes 9 (1) (2008) . .Mitsui's

wider research interests include cosmopohtamsm and popular culture in

Japan. She has been centrally i?:olved in_ exploring memo~ies of war in

East Asia, alongside gender pol1t1cs and Smo-Japanese relations.

Stavroula Pipyrou is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and Lecturer in Social

Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. She has conducted exten­

sive fieldwork among the Grecanici (Greek-speaking) linguistic minority

of Reggio Calabria, South Italy, on issues of governance, relatedness and

civil society. Her current project looks at the inter-generational impact of

~hild displacem~nt as a result of natural disasters and Cold War politics

m 1950s Calabna. Her monograph is entitled The Grecanici of Southern

Italy: Governance, Vrolence and Minority Politics (University of Penns J-

vama Press, 2016). y

Nigel Rapport_ is Professor of Anthropological and Philosophical Studies at

the Umvers1ty of St ~ndrews, Scotland, where he is Head of the School

?f t~throp_ology, Philosophy and Film Studies. His research interests

me ~ e social the?ry, phen~menology, identity and individuality, com­

mumty, c~nve~sat10n analysis and links between anthropology and lit-

1:~j::~ ~f A~~t~;;~;Y· R(~enthb1oks include Anyone, the Cosmopolitan

Anthropological R J~ erg a n 2012) and Distortion and Love: An

2016). ea mg of the Art and Life of Stanley Spencer (Ashgate

Huon_ Wardle is Director of the Centr £ .

University of St Andrews. H h l e or C?smopohtan Studies at the

ethnog1aphy and philos h e /s ong-standmg research interests in the

to the Caribbean. His b opky .0 !cosmopolitanism with particular regard

i . K. oo s me ude An Eth h

sm m tngston, Jamaica (2000) and ( . nograp _Y of Cosmopolitan-

to Read Ethnography (2007). His e w~th Palo~a Gay y Blasco) H ow

the Cosmopolitan Work of C . ssay, The Artist Carl Abrahams and

won the J B D entrmg and Periph r · R · · onne Prize and h b era IZlng the Self' recently

oyal Anthropological Institute (~01~~~ published by the Journal of the

►

Introduction

Testing freedom

Moises Lino e Silva and Huon Wardle

This book offers an updated overview of the diverse ways freedom is under­

stood and practised across cultural contexts, including the emergent relation­

ships between governance, autonomy and liberty that characterise everyday

worlds. Oksala (2005:209) has argued that when understood as a practice,

'freedom is defined and gains a meaning only through the concrete opera­

tions through which its existence is tested. It emerges through the particular,

political and/or personal struggles that try and test its limits, possibilities

or extent'. In response, this volume mobilises a wide range of ethnography

in order to expand our understanding of the social dynamics, ontological

assemblages and referential acts by which the co-dependence of authority

and freedom is recreated. In rethinking political protocol through the lens of

'freedom', we tackle a central concern: 'How are normative claims used to

present a particular way to define a problem and its solution, as if these were

the only ones possible, while enforcing closure and silence on other ways of

thinking and talking?' (Shore and Wright 1997:3)

Our understanding of the daily operations of freedom in practice includes,

then, a strong focus on the spaces of argument and negotiation wherein daily

meanings of freedom appear and are tested, and how the material apparatus

of freedom is operationalised, thus opening new limits and horizons. Thus

a wealth of ethnographic insight is provided in each of our chap~ers on

how different people, in multiple sites across the world, deploy meamng~ of

freedom that foreclose certain possibilities for comprehendm? and_narratmg

freedom while opening others up. At ground level, the relat10nsh1p of g~v­

ernance and freedom is mercurial - sometimes the intervention of authonty

allows further freedom, sometimes it is that which blocks the pathway_ to

· H · · , h h freedom' is not an exclusive

1t. owever, m our view, governance t roug

characteristic of late-liberal regimes (Rose 1999). . .

Wh h t be free or not free? To the extent that meamng 1s

o or w a can ' . d "f£ eanings of free-

defined through reference, or acts of nammg, 1 erent m . d t"

dom deployed in daily life derive their significance from spec1bfic an ~on md-. 1 · · f freedom to e constitute .

gent instructions that allow the particu ant1es O • . 1 1 • . ff d · daily life mvo ves an ana ys1s

Hence determining the meanmg o ree om m I er which instructions

of practical power effects as well as the strugg es ov '

1 I

2 Moises Lino e Silva and Huon Ward1e

li · h Id b followed in order to determine who and what falls or po cies, s ou e h Id b I

d h f 'the free' and what or who s ou e exc uded from un er t e category o , . . · N h I to address our question satisfactorily, we cannot neglect it. evert e ess, · d I an exploration of the relationship between semantics ~n onto ogy. Each

of the contributors to this volume adds an ethnographic focus to debates

surrounding a family of terms that include~ 'freedom', 'liberty', 'autonomy'

and 'self-determination'. In each case on view here, we see elements of gov­

ernance instantiated at the same moment that certain kinds of claims to

freedom are defined and put into play. Some of the contributors give more

focus to the semantics and pragmatics of freedom in language and daily life,

while others choose to approach their ethnographic material as an ontologi­

cal inquiry. To get us started, we propose some considerations regarding both the

semantic problems implicated in anthropological studies of 'freedom', 'lib­

erty', 'autonomy' and 'self-determination', as well as the ontological chal­

lenges that those who venture into the field may encounter along their path

when they adopt an ethnographic approach (see, for example, Kelty in this

volume).

Autonomy versus freedom

'I doub~ whether any anthropologist has set out to study a people's ideas

about freedom in the setting of a field situation', Audrey Richards suggests

at the beginning of a discussion of Central and East African concepts of free­

dom from the 1960s (1963:49). Richards was right that ethnographies with

this focus were rare at the time she was writing. This had not always been

the case, though, before the advent of professional anthropology. European

travellers of earlier eras did attend to the striking 'freedom' of the peoples

they visited. For example, Chretien Leclerq and earlier Samuel de Cham­

plain, both highlighted this when describing the Algonkian peoples they

encountered in North America during the seventeenth century whose 'self­

reliant' and 'outspoken demeanour' impressed them considerably:

No one ever seemed to give orders nor to take them· while each acted on

his _own, all could c?or~in_ate their activities and w~rk together. Further,

th_eir ow~ sense of mtrmsic freedom of movement in and the symbiosis

w~th their woodland environment was brought into relief in discussions

with Euro?eans, as the Indians gradually came to understand the nature

of the environment from which they had . E come m urope. (McFeat 1974:53)

'Freedom' is still not a widely d l d . I f . . . . ep oye concept m contemporary anthropol-

ogy. n act, a certam 1IDplicit ace · f . to give 'freedom' l . l usation o naivety attaches to any attempt

ana ytica status and part f . . h " . d . is to debate whr H . f . ' 0 our aim m t is mtro uction

· · owever, 1 10stead Richards had been asked to explore

-'autonomy', she would have had t d . Introduction 3

burgeoning and has continued to ; a ~that the literature was Ir d

rooted in ancient Greek the word ,ow. Y the difference? Is it ba ea Y • A 1 S ' autonomy' h ecause,

than its ng o- axon cousin 'freedom'} 0 as a more academic rin

h · d · • · r are there b 1 . g emp as1s an meaning at issue? As we will d. su t e specificities of

be that the meaning of 'freedom' is subtl tscuss latei:, one problem may

controversies arou?d 'free will' that anth?o e:~:n~ed with Judeo-Christian

using 'autonomy' instead. Autonomy ma pfi bgiSts m~y hope to evade by

gist's overall emphasis on social or cultur:i ct ttter_ wi!h the anthropolo­

do~' does not (Laidlaw 2014; Murphy & T.:;:0;r~~iot a way that 'free-

Either way, separately, or as a package the core t t f · , h d . . ' ene s o autonomy_ fol-

lowing one s own pat an rules m life, displaying maste , d · · h d · r . d ry over one s own

c~nh inon,_ t e esfir1e1

to ivbe_ m. ependent of control by others _ have been,

wit pro~ifsosdto ~ how, u iqmtous in the _modern ethnographic record. In

contrast, r~e om as appeared _as a fuzzier, or sometimes overly narrow,

target, seemmgly harder to localise or define as Richards pointed out. As

such, high valuations of autonomy are recorded in ethnographies from so

many different locations - Australasia, Africa, Asia, the American plains,

Lowland Amazonia - that we may reasonably infer some kind of primary

intuition about what it means to be human either on the part of the people

studied, or of ethnographers, or both. Anthropologists have witnessed this stress on autonomy especially in so­

called small-scale, non-literate cultures, but also in large, state-like forma­

tions, where, even if people complain about its absence, the ideal is still

ubiquitous. The principle of autonomy has been emphasised among some

groups, such as the Indians of the North American Plains, almost to the

point of cliche (e.g. Hoebel 1954:142-143). Clastres's argument ?1at lo~­

land Amazonian societies have been fundamentally shaped by their pursmt

of communal autonomy 'against the state' has been profound!y influe~tial

in ethnological work in that region too. In The Nuer, Evans-Pritchard gives

us perhaps the classic description of how the struggle for auton~my has

h . , h"c' society In this quote, a role in creating order in an ot erwise a~arc 1 ,. ·

'autonomous' is synonymous with 'free and mdependent ·

d to fi ht and his willingness [A Nuer man] must always be prepar~ f Js i~tegrity as a free and

and ability to do so are t~e only prot;:t:n~ bullying of his kinsmen.

independent person agamst t~e ava h st resist their demands on

They protect him against outsiders, bu~ ehmu e of kinship are inces-

d d on a man m t e nam himself. The deman s ma e he utmost. sant and imperious and he resiSts them tot (1940:184)

t for autonomy of you~g Nuer

The Nuer has a strong focus on_ the c;;~es amongst others have w1t::s~:~

men but classic studies by Phyl~is fa :n (1939), while Fred Mye

a si~ilar stress amongst Abongma worn

4 Moises Lino e Silva and Huon Wardle . . ·t f autonomy both by Pmtup1 women and

. . d th on the pursu1 o . . wntten m ep

1. ( o ·ane Austin-Broos, this volume on the idea · w, t n Austra 1a see 1 .

men m wes er d Overing has written widely on the com-£ ,1. • , h. way') an Joanna . . .

0 ivm t is . d" .d I freedom and conviviality that charactenze the bined emphases on m 1v1 ua . • ( 0 ·

f P. women and men m Amazoma e.g. venng and interdependency o iaroa di 1· · · ·

) Th all cases of mobile, broa y ega 1tanan soc1et1es. Passes 2000 . ese are · d"ff ·

. h · d ·nto questions about how autonomy 1s 1 erent1ated Wit out gomg eeper 1 · h · h · t"es _ e g between male and female, younger and older -wit in t ese soc1e 1 · · . . h h h w generally is that ideas akm to autonomy seem to be readily

w at t ey s o f h h. · · I available everywhere ethnographers go. The act t at t 1s 1s not _s1~p y a matter of empirical observation will, hopefully, become clear as this discus-

sion opens outward.

The liberty of translation

As we may begin to recognise, identifying 'freedom' or ' autonomy' as exist­ences in their own terms is not without complication. What possible defini­tion of freedom could one suggest based on ethnographic research methods? Before proposing any answers, it helps if we make certain 'pre-theoretical' commitments more explicit: What is the presupposed relationship between freedom, the particular languages in which fieldwork is conducted, and the problem of translation?

Notice how the following description of the Pintupi, extracted from its ethnographic context, might be understood to apply almost anywhere: 'Pin­tupi life is highly personalized; for people to abstract from the intimate and familiar is unusual. They place emphasis on individuals, their autonomy, and their_ capacity to choose courses of action' (Myers 1992:18). To take a quite d1f~erent _example, the Confucian concept of ziyou - if we are able momentarily to ignore radical differences of social scale and hierarchy -has a mo~e than passing resemblance to those Pintupi principles. Ziyou is 0_ften g_lossed as _'freedom', but fits well, arguably better, with 'autonomy' smce, literally, ziyou translates from Chinese as 'self-follow' a principle in ~ther words, o~ following one's own route (Li 2014). As with the Pint~pi

t owd_e: er, t

1he kmd of autonomy involved is understood to unfold out of ~

ra ltlona range of valu A d h . 1. seem to cover s1·m1·1 t es. n erem ies a problem - 'autonomy' may ar erntory to 'fre d , d ,

to be replayed across different soc· I e ?m, an autonomy' may appear created by our attempts at t

1 1~ settmgs, but perhaps this is an illusion

rans at1on To take a different example the H" cl" .

glossed as 'freedom' was co-' d dm .1 term swara7, which is likewise often , opte urmg the t I f

ence to mean both 'self-rule' d 'h s rugg e or Indian independ-For Gandhi, swaraj meant t~ ote rule' (with resulting ambiguities). the deeper implication of cutt·n e_pen ence from colonial power but had

1vatmg cap · · f , as opposed to relinquishing cont I f ac1t1es or personal self-governance of Kant here). In Gandhi's view ~o o . ohneself to the state (there are echoes

as wit Malinowski later in Freedom and

. • h Introduction 5 Civilization), t e only means to counte b I

• r a ance the 's II , state was to ennch practices of volunta . . 0

~ ess power of the analogy being life as a fellow villager Gry adshs?chiation, with the foundational

· an I t us arg d · h thought that swaraj would be achieved si I b ue a~amst t ose who

d I d . mp Y Y transferrmg powe t indepen ent n 1an government (1910) All th· r O an

· I d · IS suggests that the meaning of swara7 was a rea y open for discussion well b f • d .

h e ore m ependence. Either

way, t e matter turns out to be more complicat d · h fix • . h h • e smce t e pre sva m

swara7, t oug it suggests a personal pronoun does not transl t d. 1 , If, · d · · I ' a e 1rect y as se - mstea 1t 1s c oser to 'own' hence its bifurcat·

, f' d 'h , • ' mg use to mean both sel an ome . Va1dyanathan has therefore argued that th th , I , I • . . , ra er an sel~-ru e , a tr~er trans at10n of sw~ra7 mto English may be 'proper rule',

wh1_ch paradoxically has the potential to mean the opposite of autonomy (Va1dyanathan 1989). Note that autos in ancient Greek means 'self' but also 'same': Orlando Patterson has argued that the Greek understanding of 'self' and hence the idea of self-governance evolved dialectically from the distinction between slaves who were ruled and citizens who ruled them­selves (1991).

During Lino e Silva's fieldwork in one of the largest Brazilian slums (see chapter 7), his interlocutors almost never used the word 'freedom' in their daily lives. Since the ethnography was conducted in Portuguese, people spoke of 'liberdade', 'liberada', 'libertafifo' and not of 'freedom'. This may sound obvious, but many difficulties arise from it. Peter Gow (see chap­ter 6) notes the various candidates for translating what we might take to be an antonym of 'freedom' - 'slavery' - amongst the Piro. Each of these meanings has valences, including notions of kinship affiliation, absent from the liberal understanding of slavery, he argues. Hideko Mitsui picks up this problem from a different angle when she discusses the political and cultural repercussions of transliterating the Dutch word 'vrijheid' ('furaiheido') in Japanese 'without explaining the meaning of the original word' (see chap­ter 2). Even in English, as we have pointed out in this introduction, and as Nigel Rapport explores further (chapter 1), there are subtle incomme~su­rabilities between and thus distinctive semantic potentials for deploying, Words such as 'liberty' and 'freedom'. Whereas, in other languages, such as Portuguese, the challenge is the opposite: 'liberdade' could mean both

'liberty' and 'freedom'. . d · In A . . . 'd bl bound to 10 etermmacy.

ny exercise of translation 1s unavoi a Y f h f . f I · Id help to urt er our act, the theory of the indeterminacy o trans atwn cou . . d c ded

d If ept the pos1t10n e1en ontological understanding of free om. we ace

1 . • er abso-

b h th t no trans at10n 1s ev Y Williard von Quine (1981), w O argues ,lreedom' is not, for example,

lutely determined, then the awareness th_at , '"uraiheido' seems • d , '/" · thts way or even ,, isomorphic with 'liberda e, or tvmg bl . Q 1·ne (1981· 23) explains

b d I I pro emat1c. u · to ecome both clearer an a so ess h f t that 'two conflicting man-that indeterminacy of translation_ re~ects t ~I~~ positions of behavior, and uals of translation can both do JUStice to a isof which manual is right.' h . . f t of the matter t at, m such case, there 1s no ac

6 Moises Lino e Silva and Huon Wardle

'f d , is understood as an imprecise translation of 'libe To that extent, ree om 1· . f h r-

h • however is that the rep 1cat1on o et nograph·

dade' T e expectation, , . . . , 1c . · . h. h the word 'liberdade' is put into practice m the field' may instances in w 1c . · · f

h I d me Of the unavoidable indetermmat10n o translation so e p to re uce so b ·

h • lence between the two terms can e more precisely deline

t at an equ1va . -

ated by each one of us, even if never completely resolved. 9mne (198l:

20) reminds us, 'The translation adopted arrests ~he free-floatmg reference

of the alien terms only relatively to the free-floating reference of our own

terms, by linking the two'. The issue of translation preoccupies Caroline Humphrey in her writing

on freedom. In 2007, Humphrey published an essay entitled 'Alternative

Freedoms', which is a more current example of an anthropology of free­

dom. The fact that the American Philosophical Society awarded a prestig­

ious prize to Humphrey for that essay is an indication of how important

an anthropological approach to the theme of freedom could be for other

disciplines. Interestingly, though, in her text, Humphrey intentionally brack­

ets off discussions regarding what philosophers have to say about freedom.

Instead, she emphasises how some people in Russia, with whom she had

been working for years, referred to ideas similar to freedom. In Humphrey's

(2007:1) words, 'I want to use our word "freedom" -whose multiple mean­

ings will be implicit and ldt to your imaginations - to elicit, as it were, a

range of ideas held in Russia.' However, the author does not really address

in depth the problem of how meanings left to imagination could still elicit

certain ideas that the Russians held on freedom.

In ethnographic studies regarding the topic of freedom in the lives of ' oth­

ers', if the researcher proposes to grasp the existence of freedom as an object

of _ethnographic research, the conditions of possibility for such an object to

;xist need to be s~mehow es~ablished. In most cases, researchers are happy 0 assume that~ given 1:11eanmg of freedom (often not spelled out) is a good

~nough theo:etical basis to be deployed in their search for 'freedom' (or

autonomy') 1 th h · . n_ e :esearc settmg. For example, say an anthropologist has

the following in mind· 'f cl X' . . . . · ree om means . Havmg at some point experi-

enced this specific 'X' m · f f cl . h

eanmg o ree om, durmg research the ethnog-rap er proceeds onward t I k f b" . . '

. 'X' 0 00 or o 1ects similar enough to what the meanmg accepts as ' f cl , I of whether the th . r~e ~m · mportantly, this is done independently

Therefore h . o ers mvo ve would necessarily call 'X' freedom or not. , avmg encountered certain 'f cl , • ' .

ence was initially allow cl b 'X' ree oms m the field whose exist-

what linguistic sign woueld by 'f the anthropologist proceeds to find out est re er to 'X' · h .

The advantage of this str t . 1

m t e specific language.

tion' in a straightforward a egy is c ear. It addresses the issue of 'transla-. manner: translati b .

an ob1ect whose existence is all d b h _on ecomes a matter of finding

d f fi . owe y t e im . . 'X' an o ndmg which speci·fic 1. . . . agmat1ve range offered by Th· mgu1st1c s1gn·fi · cl

ts approach remediates a situation in 1. er is use to refer to that object. which some people could be argued

to have no freedom if th d Introduction 7

. . ey o not have the d 'f direct translation of it) in their Ian wo~ reedom' (or an assumed

it assumes a priori certain meani;g~afe. ihe disadvantage, however, is that

to spell out, but if they were possibl or reefi°m that are not just difficult

those 'X' meanings attributed to freede to spe f out, they would reveal that

pologist already knows and not neces om_ tre o te~ the ones that the anthro­

with whom the ethnography has bee~a~~~d:~:;~~'k created by the peo~le

we could end up with 'native' obi·ects and . f an£ extreme scenario,

h · signs or a reedom that could

ave more meanmg as 'freedom' to peoplefor · h

I · • I eign to t at context than to

peop e in 1t. t seems at least possible that the rei·te t· f , · . . . ra 10n o autonomy' m

many settm~s may md1cate_ a pre-theoretical assumption on the part of the

a_nthr~polog1st, but what, m turn, does that imply? Some of the assump­

~1ons involved seem t~ be directly connected to how the self or subjectivity

1s thought to be constituted and how freedom is expected to feature in th· . •

IS

const1tut10n.

The subject of freedom

As the last examples show, there are clear dangers in assuming too much

about what people mean by the seemingly shared ideas - freedom, auton­

omy, liberty. Returning specifically to autonomy, first, the significance of

'self' - the 'auto-' in 'autonomy' - can be radically indeterminate across cul­

tures when measured against a certain kind of Euro-American expectation.

After all, ethnographic surveys and models of what a 'self' is offer some­

thing of a smorgasbord. To take one instructive case, Marriott has argued

that the image of an island-like individual self in a sea of social activity often

encountered in Western thought is largely alien to the mainstream of Indian

culture where instead the view of what it means to be human is fundamen­

tally socio-centric. Self is not here a causal force in its own right - it is not

the self-propelling soul or autokineton of Platonic philosophy - rather its

consistency derives from the relations in which it i~ engage~. When the self

becomes isolated from sustaining social relationships (by disease_ fo: ~xam­

ple), it manifests this not in the form of a stripped down or bare ~divid~al­

ity, but rather as a problematic 'dividuality' awaiting personal remtegrati~n

within the social matrix - the soul body can only be ma~e ~hte / g~m

through reconnection to others (1976). It turns out th~t ~his kin ° _reha-. . "d d . h thnograph1c literature as is t e

t1onal view of the self 1s as w1 esprea m t e e bl f h . . ually as prone to pro ems o

emphasis on autonomy - but per aps it is eq f nhood and autonomy

l • E. h ial holistic views o perso trans at10n. 1t er way, soc - . f bemusement with a Western

of this kind are often expressed m terms O .

philosophy of self that seems to imply the followmg:

. ' h d making all the decisions for that

A little man stuck in a person t e~ ff from outside. But, then, you

person. This little man cannot e s ut o

. . o e Silva and Huon Wardle

s Moises Ltn . en smaller man in the head of the l't I

d whether there is an ev I t e

won er d so forth. man, and so on an (Li 2014)

. k' d f vi·ew is the force behind and terminus of 1.t

h If . this m o , ff s Since t e se , m d cti· ons this can seem to set o a regressiv

ous planne a ' d . 1 e own autonom l e of this (seemingly para ox1ca ) self-causin

hf the abso ute sourc I h ' h g

sear~ o~ . fi ·rely reiterated homuncu us pus mg t e cognitive

self-1dent1ty -!land ifn n~ill. The special philosophy of 'free will' has given

levers of so-ca e ree h A . h h . . ch European and Nort mencan t oug t, espe-

a umque twist to mu f d · . II • the European Enlightenment - oregroun mg a problem or

cia y since . Id . .

conflict that seems either absent m ~ther wor v1~ws or as prese~tmg an

-11 · to be overcome, as in Buddhism where arnval at an expenence of

I usIOn j'f f b ' . 'not-self' offers a spiritual alternative to a 1 e o su 1ect1ve striving and

desire (Gowans 2003:25). Indeed, Buddhist practices of liberating the self

from its indebtedness to past and future, ego and other, suggest something

of a polarity with a Western eschatology that understands these relations

as precisely constitutive of ethical 'free will ' , as we will see later in this

introduction. As mentioned, the difficulty of disentangling 'freedom' from the philoso­

phy of 'free will ' probably gives one reason why anthropologists have pre­

ferred to talk about the 'autonomy' of the people they work with rather

~han their 'freedom'. Certainly, we cannot discuss freedom without explor­

mg the concept ?f free wi_ll, but we will leave that issue for now and pick it

up_ later. Suffice 1t to say, if we are to take autonomy to be something like a

umversally available idea, then we will have to cut loose from the assump­

thwn that ~utonomy and free will are in effect the same. Some idea of a self

t at goes its own way · b h' d h remams e m t ough. The evidence suggests that

autonomy offers a broad . f . , historically d I II I n?t consistent ioundation for the much more

round Nine:n ctuh tura y specific concept of free will, but not the other way

· een -century teleolog· t h H l II' was a necessary int II I is s sue as ege argued that 'free wi

e ectua outcome of th d' I . l I f omy at the apex of whi h . h e 1a ect1ca -strugg e or auton-

human being within a st ct 1~~ e self-governance of the fully individuated

secure to say the least. a e. e contemporary position has to be much less

. If the dimension of 'self' h ' d · - t e aut ' · :° eterrrunate, so too inevitably . h o I~ autonomy - is significantly

awfulness - that is the second as is t ~ notion of 'governance' - nomos,

~edss' or_governance cannot app pe~t oh the word. The problem of 'lawful-

s1 ers his or h 1·c ear mt e same , his h er he to be self-caused . way 10r someone who con-

or er own per I . ' as It does £ h d of cust sona actions as an or one w o understan s

om or of social I . outgrowth fl . . seems often to emer re at1on~. Historicall t ' ?r ux10nal express10n,

pathway whi h . ge as a reaction to rest . ~• he idea of self-government

' c m turn . . fictions on , II . l gives nse to an . 10 owing a traditiona

assertion of . . pos1t1ve autonomy or

Introduction 9

self-determination. Some of the social forces · l d d · h' . . . mvo ve are capture m t 1s

descnpt10n by Low1e of Plains Indian individualism:

The worst Crow insult was to tell a man that he had no relatives for it

m~ant that he was a social nobody subject to abuse. To a spirit~d lad

t~1s_tau~t, h~wever,_was a ~hallenge: he could court spiritual blessings,

d1stmgmsh himself m fi.ghtmg, gain wealth, and ultimately shame his

detractors. (Lowie [1920]1954:124)

It is not 'free will' that is being claimed here, though this might be implied;

what is at issue is the reintegration of someone back into the mainstream

of community life, which has been cut off in one direction, by way of other

kinds of valued relationship. We can note, in this regard, that in Europe,

conflicts over religious autonomy were rife long before the liberal enlight­

enment analytic of existential freedom gained traction. For example, the

'antinomianism' of sixteenth-century Protestants built on centuries of ideo­

logical struggle for religious self-governance vis-a-vis an incomprehensible,

exclusive and socially distant church hierarchy.

We should expect to find then, despite the broad generality of the idea of

autonomy, that the pragmatic contexts and meanings accompanying it will

vary dramatically. To take one example, for the Papuan Kapauku, accord­

ing to Pospisil, individual freedom is an all-important cultural idea and this

extends into how the relationship between soul and body is constituted. For

Kapauku, soul and body are autonomous agents whose cooperative efforts

bring about individuality in the full sense - neither can achieve this on its

own. Soul can dream in an inert body, bodily action can continue even in

the absence of awareness, but neither soul nor body is a fully conscious per­

son except in coalition. If, though, soul and body fail to acknowledge each

other's autonomy, this will lead to sickness. Likewise, if the individual is

forced to work for others, or their movements are curtailed by being jailed,

these restraints can cause fatal illness due to the body's resistance to com­

pulsion and the effect of this bodily revolt on the soul (1978:84-88). T~e

Kapauku have stood out in the ethnographic record as a small-scale so~1-

ety characterised by values (individualism, personal freedom, co~ercial

competitiveness) more usually vaunt~d am~ngst business P~~pl~ m gran~­

scale commercial settings. Despite this seemmg cultural farruhanty tho~g ,

as Pospisil shows, the integration of autonomy into their other cosmological

ideas is distinctive. , , h

It is worth considering in this light that the relati~e a~tonomy t : a

given person or community is able to claim offers a vital sign of ~o_w he:

are understood and valued by others around them. For exampl~, this is w a

Pipyrou (chapter 4) demonstrates through her research on conflicts_ge~erat~d . hr h · ·1 ociety orgamsat1ons m

by the imposition of multi-governance t oug CIVl s

. . and Huon Wardle

10 Moises Lino e Silva . f authorising autonomy are, of

h I 1 The boundaries of this procedss o traction. In a landmark deci-Sout ta y. · on an con

Onstantly open to extens1 . d a writ of habeas corpus on two course, c y k · dge issue k I · · II . . May 2015 a New or JU I 1·versity Stony Broo . mt1a y

s10n, m ' · in a loca un ' f

h. anzees held at laboratories . d' willingness on the part o the

c 1mp d to m 1cate . , H

at least the judgement seeme d by a group advocatmg Non- uman ' d uments ma e · · b · [ ]' 1

l·udge to acknowle ge arg , ous and self-determmmg emg s .

. were autonom . Rights' that the pnmates . I els not least because 1t seems to

d . II ng at many ev , , . The debate involve is te 1 d knows what 'autonomy means m

d h t everyone concerne d h' 'd ' take for grante t a . . . •s how to exten t 1s 1 ea to non-

d h I ema1mng question I . h'l practice, an t e on Y r d b d this is hardly the case smce, w 1 e

humans' . As we have alrhea y o s~rvley 'un1·versal valence, its pragmatic and

k 1 ely as seeming autonomy ta e~ 00~ b d' ally distinctive: so much so that what

situational ranuficauons cadn e ra m,cy in one situation can be quite literally . . d a move towar autono dh' 1s v1ewe as d . . another In Hind Swaraj, Gan 1 argues . k ning and soul estroymg m . . k d 1·k .

sic e b f B ·t· h women engaged in paid wor , an l ew1se that the large num er O n is . . • f h ·

h ry Suffragette movement, was md1cat1ve, not o t e growmg t e contempora • d I · ·

f but instead of a deep moral sickness an ma a1se m a autonomy o women, . If (1909 24) British way of life that was, he suggests, bound to destroy 1tse : ..

It may be a necessary feature of any particular discourse of freedom that 1t

forecloses as much as it opoos. Hence we might say that, at least in most cultures that we are aware of,

people seem to agree that autonomy is a valuable human (and non~human)

good for those deemed to deserve it, but, both cross-culturally and 1t woul_d

seem intra-culturally too, there may be little agreement about what this

good looks like in context, even less in practice.

Possible freedoms

What I am afraid of about humanism is that it presents a certain form of our

ethics as a universal model for any kind of freedom. I think there are more

secrets, more possible freedoms, and more inventions in our future than we

can imagine in humanism as it is dogmatically represented on every side of

the political rainbow: the Left, the Centre, the Right. (Foucault 1988:15)

These comments by Foucault contain a d . . . as elements of a theory about th d' ~gree of cryptic opt1m1sm as well

ask to be delved into Foucault t ~ co_n itions for freedom, both of which

ideas about 'freedo~' are 1·nt a es it as self-evident that 'humanism' and

f erconnected hi · II

reedom can also exist indepe d I f st0nca Y, but he proposes that

h n entyo hum ·

to now. T ere are more freed . amsm as we have known it up . h . . oms available t h .

e1t ~r w~y, humanistic ethics in its c o us t an we currently imagme;

outlived Itself - other frameworks f urfrent dogmatic version has perhaps or reedo b .

m can e invented. Sundering

. Introduction 11

humamsm from freedom, as he elaborat 1 of the self and the techniques that go int es e se~he~e, calls for a rethinking

d 'f . . ft o creatmg 1t

Free om, 1 it 1s o en used interchangeabl . h ·. h

erty, has resonances of its own. We have se ytwh It f e1tder a~tonomy or lib-. 11 h b' . en at ree om is often th h

of techmca Y as t e a 1hty to exercise 'free ·11• A I oug t ·d b WI • s we a so saw: th' ·d

causes cons1 era le confusion to those for h . ' is I ea

D h If h . . w om it suggests an infinite

regress: oes t e se ave w1thm it another agent_ 'f ·11• h • . 'f , . ~ If h . . a ree w1 t at tnggers 1ts ree act10ns. so, w at 1s this 'free will' triggered b ~ And

· h J I 'f d , , Y · so on. At quite anot er eve, ree om, autonomy' and 'Ji·berty' h d'ff d •

. . . ave I erent en-

vat10ns, and the differences m usage are suggestive In Engl'sh . . . . • 1 , autonomy

md1cates a capa~1ty for self-rule, while the state of being 'free'_ ' freedom' _

suggests somethmg else: not only action that goes unimpeded but feelin

db h . h · · d ' gs ~n ~ av:our t , at ar~ s~mte ; generous and wholehearted. Cognate words

mcludmg frank and fnendly supply further insights, as do the old Norse

word frja, to love, Old Saxon friohan, to court or woo, not to mention

contemporary Dutch, vrijen, to woo or caress. There seem to be charismatic

and enthusiastic qualities to being 'free' that are not so obvious when we

refer to possessing 'autonomy', or 'liberty'.

Liberty, which derives from the Latin fiber, a free person, is rooted ety­

mologically in the idea of growing amongst a people (lndo-European, /eudh

to grow up; people; free, Shipley 1984:220). From this viewpoint, liberties

derive from growing with, and hence having rights in, a community. In this

vein, Humphrey notes that svoboda, one of the Russian words translated as

'freedom' indexes a 'Svoi' or 'We' who are 'full members of the patriarchal

and kin-based community' suggesting something more like the root mean­

ing of 'liberty' than 'freedom' (2007:2). Like freedom and free, liberty has

an adjectival form, liberal, but liberal and free have only limited semantic

overlap in English. In the case of liberty and autonomy, the idea of regula­

tion by norm or law is a necessary element of the definition, but this is not so

with freedom. When, in The Social Contract, Rousseau defines true liberty

as 'obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves' he might equally be

defining autonomy: indeed, Kant turns Rousseau's view into his own logic

of the 'autonomous will'. 'Autonomous' and 'free' correspond more closely

in meaning than 'free' and 'liberal', but, as we have already seen, what they

bring to mind is also subtly different too. 'Free', draws most directly on

the image of a self that is able to do whatever it wants to the fullest extent,

wholeheartedly. The notion of a kind of governance to w~ich fre~dom co~­

responds is only a secondary consideration. It is precisely m relati?n to _this

indeterminacy of freedom that the philosophical pro~lem of 'free will' anses.

As opposed to liberty or autonomy, then, in English usage at_ leas~, free­

dom is an unruly and quite literally, underdetermined con~eP.t, L1bert1es, we ' · · · · the life and growth of

can say, derive their meaning from part1c1pation m .

a community· they are 'taken' or enacted publicly with and agamhst others

h ' d TVT h win the seventeent century,

w ose status is thereby marke . we can note O k , · d 'l'b h ted or spo e unrestrame 1 eral' was a term of abuse for persons w O ac

l

. S .1 d Huon Wardle 12 Moises Lino e t va an .

· g that has reappeared m contemporary d m'2 _ a meamn . . .

by prudence or ecoru A my is as much a mode of self-d1sc1plme . 1· . 1 discourse. utono . 1 . ty·

American po 1tica l l . no doubt a potential y sat1s mg one . . . t' n of externa ru e, . d

as 1t 1s a re1ec 10 . ' th i'deas of personal maturation an the h h f ·n connection w1 .

when t oug t O 1 f If There is clear common-sense meamng . . h · k d act or onese •

ab1hty to t m an b ather too quickly ruled out of court by phi-to freedom that seems to e r .. 1 ' d . d .

h h. I theorists as naive - name y, omg an saymg 1 phers and ot er et ica . . f f d oso . . b h' definition the minimal description o ree om as

what I like'. Agam, Y t ts ' · · f d . • h · t' seems insufficient on closer mspect1on: ree om

'actmg wit out constrain . . l · 1· h · matic sense of sub1ect1ve abundance, even ove. Free-

always 1mp 1es a c ans I • h · 1 than s,·mply a lack or an absence of, contro . Eit er way,

dom 1s sure y more ' . 1 · h d'sti'ncti·ons between liberty autonomy and freedom should p~q~t~I , . .

· d ·f othi'ng else that the words can carry with them uncons1d-remm us, 1 n , . ered implications, even into the most carefully thought-through theoretical discourse. Nigel Rapport takes up distinctions like_ these: ~etw_een_ some_ of the English valences of 'freedom' versus tho_se of 'hb~rty , 1~ his d1s~uss_1on of the artist Stanley Spencer (chapter 1). A liberal society will make msutu­tional space for individual freedom, even of the sometimes extreme imagi­native types that Spencer instantiates, but 'freedom' in this analytical use is divided from 'liberty' in much the same way that the world as it exists for the imagining subject is divided from how it exists objectively, Rapport argues.

The politics of 'free will'

Hannah Arendt holds that we have St Augustine to blame for the special sta­tus of 'free will' in Western philosophy (1978). In his Confessions, Augustine sets up 'willing' as the dimension of self that unifies and organises ' being' and 'knowing' when the time comes to act in the world. Only because I will does the awareness of what I am and what I know take the shape of a uni­fied self t~at acts definitively. Unlike God, a human self cannot know itself absolutely or transcendentally: forced to know the world in time hence ?linded from absolute truth, the self must depend on its free will t~ make its own p_at~, fo_r g_ood or ill. Augustine arrives at this integral force of the will by distmgu~shmg it from the 'heresy' of the Manichees for whom the self was a chaotic battlegrou d f · · l f . . . h nfl' n ° spmtua orces. Precisely by emphasizing

t e co tct ~f the will with itself, Augustine is able to make a unifying free

:::~;~: ~:::~/~t~1t1~at demons

1trates the integrity of the self. It is the self-

wi mg - a sou that wills d ·11 h that characterises know! d f h an m s at t e same moment -. . e ge o t e self as som h . d h t m time (Arendt 1978:84-ll0). eone w o JU ges ow to ac

If Arendt is right, then Augustine h b ers, a truly multi-layered three d' ~s equeathed, at least to Western-

b ' - 1mens1onal ep· t 1 · 1 I may e much less easy than we th' k 15 emo og1ca conundrum. t hke - to escape some of those h m. t~ extract the ingredients we don't

f E' h umamst ideas b f d I re ers to. it er way, Augustine's ar . a out ree om that Foucau t gument is further embedded in a much

Introduction 13 deeper and more widely ramifying set of I • the place of human beings in the world_ ;ohsmo ogicalfass~mp~ions about

I h f . . H . a t e centre o which 1s a particu ar myt o ongm. ere 1s how Fromm descri'b d 1 . -es an ana yses 1t:

The biblical myth of man's expulsion from p d' ·d 'fi b · · f h ara tse • • . 1 entt es the _egmnmg ~ uman history with an act of choice, but it puts all empha-

sis on the smfulness of this first act of freedom Ma · d

, . . . n . . . acts against Go s_ co~and, he breaks through the state of harmony with nature of which he 1s part ... From the standpoint of the church .. . this is sin. From the standp~int ~f man, however, this is the beginning of human freedom ... freemg himself from coercion ... committing a sin is ... the first human act.

(Fromm 1965:49-50)

For humans living in history (that is, acting in time), understanding the world begins with a singular choice: a free act, a fully human act, also the first sinful act because it defies the order of the cosmos. Freedom may sug­gest love, abundance and an enthusiastic state of indeterminacy, but, cos­mologically speaking, free action is sin, defiance and ignorance. As Fromm argues, in Abrahamic doctrine, the relationship of divine order and human freedom is irretrievably paradoxical. Compare the earlier statement with one derived from anthropologist Paul Radin's fieldwork with a group of hunter-agriculturalists, the Winnebago:

The right . .. to freedom of expression [amongst the Winnebago] is never for a moment questioned .... Free expression of thought was the order of the day and was viewed as a purely private concern, system­mongering or a systematic theology, for instance, was quite useless . .. It remained the expression of a particular man or, at best, of a particular

group. ([1927)1957:57)

As Radin argues, for the Winnebago at least, personally held though~s an_d theories posed no particular problem to community life. There were 1~ this setting no book-based codes of ethics against which freely formula~ed ideas could or should be judged. Either way, personally held interpretations had little effect on the fundamental needs and flows of social !if~. ~reedom ~as taken for granted but 'Free will' did not here arise as a d1stmhct ~esdt10nf

b ' . d'd h . the shadow of t e wor o ecause thinking and actmg I not appen m 1 1 ·

God This he noted was in stark contrast to those literate cu ltura sb~ttt~gs · • ' h of an abso ute o 1ect1v­

where the written word often takes on t e aspdect . st be measured . . . I h Id th ghts an actions mu tty against which sub1ect1ve Y , e. ~u . hole psychic life' (Radin and judged - with a resultant d1stort1on m our w h x erience of mono-1957:61). In Augustine's an~ others' accorts oft ;n: ~f how to conform theism, the question, theologically at least, ecomes

. d Huon Wardle l 4 Moises Lino e Silva an . h divine word given how little

• wn hfe to t e h ld b d f the finitude of ones O b" . ly available. It s ou e note out o . · su 1ecnve . k wledge of God's intentton is d h. h emphasis on autonomy m people no f h ght an a ig . "d I . h t While freedom o t ou etheless ind1v1 ua actions were t a h w· ebago non . of the Plains such as t e mn ~ommunal life - to the food supply m policed where they_rosed \~:tt to . Particular (cf. Low1e 1954: I . f th ancestor-worshipping Tallens1, the · h" ana yses o e . As Fortes shows m ts . 1 d 1·n the notion of free will are not . I ndrums mvo ve . key psycholog1ca conu d theistic cultures. Tallens1 eldest sons I onfine to mono . in any abso ute way c h h h •r decisions and actions are m conform-I bout w et er t e1 . . worry constant Ya

I t s (l959) However, as Gellner likewise . h ·11 f h ·r ma e ances or · ity with t ~ w1 o t ~1 theistic settings - where the holy book and the

indicates, 1t ~as ?een ~n ml ono d f domination_ that the paradoxical quali­sword combine ma smg e mo e O 1· · I 1· (1988) . 'f ·11• h taken on a particularly hard po 1t1ca out me . nes of ree w1 ave . . · I · h d And as Chris Kelty points out, this wnt!ng of free w1I mto t e source co e of c~ltural life continues quite literally mto the Western pres~nt (see chap­ter 8). Echoing Gellner's account, Edmund Leach argue~ that m, small-scale

· · h as the Kapauku the individual can sometimes be moderately soc1et1es sue , free because his rulers are incompetent rather than because they are benevo-lent' (1963:81). This self-confessedly cynical view, which assumes that t~e rules of society are imposed not agreed, is nonetheless of some relevance m thinking about Radin's case study. If 'freedom of expression' amongst the Winnebago changes little about the social situation - that is, if it makes no authentic difference to how people lead their social lives - then is it really freedom at all? Malinowski (1947) reserves some of his harshest criticism for Boas, who, along somewhat similar lines, proposes that freedom 'is a concept that has meaning only in a subjective sense. A person who is in complete harmony with his culture feels free. He accepts voluntarily the demands made up on him'. By that standard, Malinowski responds, the person who has fully incorporated 'Nazi indoctrination' is free.

~ree will, as commentators such as Foucault and indeed many others have po_mted out,_describes a special historical configuration of psychological and ep1Stem?lo_g1cal concerns. Even so, it is difficult, looking out at the world fro~- withm the field where those concerns operate, not to question the valtd1~y of other un_derstandings of freedom. If someone seems to be absent of a kmd of constraint that I feel in my life (as when R d. d .b h w· b f I. . . a m escn est e m-ne ago as ee mg no restnctton on e · h . . views), does that mean that the xpr~s~mg t eir diverse personal world-I simply projecting a concern rare pos1t1vely fr~e (see Berlin 1958), or am confronts (or perhaps avoids)~h my own onto the1r way of life? Malinowski subjective understandings of freeedsame problem when he argues that purely · • h om, ones based h I 1magme t emselves to be free

O on ow or whether peop e . I I r not, can neve h socia va ue of freedom. Freed f M . r answer t e question of the f d · om or ahnow k" · 0 , an an increment in customa . 1

s I IS an objective element h. k ' ry soc1a acf h not t m about freedom is of t·ttl ton; w at people may or may 1 e conseque nee compared to what they

Introduction 15 actually do - how, in other words freedom · b -1 • h . social action. ' is u1 t mto t e1r patterns of

!"1_ere we might ~espond, based on our previous discussion, that Malinow-ski 1s really talkmg less about 'freedom' than ab t ' l'b , 1 d d l. k'' · f f ou I erty . n ee Ma mows 1 s view o reedom as a social 'surplus' available to peopl; w?o share a common l~~guag~, customs, laws and techniques fits exactly

with_ the ~tymology of liberty , but rather less well with the unruly and cha_nsmattc conce~t, freedom. The degree to which mid-twentieth-century social anthropologists thought that the subjective, imaginative or existential aspects of freedom were irrelevant or detrimental to their concerns is strik­ing. Leach (1963) violently disagrees with Malinowski's functionalist view of freedom, but he is equally indifferent to how people might feel or think about their own freedoms; he is only interested in the socially objective side of the matter - freedom is relevant only as an objective political datum or symbol in a given social system. As suggested already, in this volume, we tend to use 'liberty' to describe the public and objective aspect of freedom, but we also allow ourselves room to consider freedom in other ways - ways that Leach and Malinowski would like to rule out.

The problem of 'free will' continues to be a problem precisely because it falls between the subjective and the publicly verifiable dimensions of what it means to be a human being. Given the object ivity of divine law and indi­vidual's limited comprehension of the world, 'free will' comes into play as the ethical mode in which action may be understood either to conform to God's plan or diverge sinfully from it. 'Free will' is not the same as 'free­dom'; it is a special theory of how human individuality plays out in a world where the rules must be somehow distinguished 'through a glass darkly'. The problem here is that since anthropologists in the phase of disciplinary consolidation tended to ignore subjective experience in favour of accounts centred on cultural or social pattern, the problems involved (falling as they do between the disciplinary stools of psychology and anthropology) have remained unexplored (Laidlaw 2014).

Freedom between imagination and bodily action For years, I have dreamed of a liberated anthropology. By 'lib~rated' I mean free from .. . a systematic dehumanizing of the human sub1ects of study,

f · I ' lture' or wax to be regarding them as the bearers o an 1mperson~ cu , . imprinted with 'cultural patterns', or as determmed by so~ial, c~ltural or · l h l · I 'f • ' · bl ' r 'pressures' of vanous kinds. socia psyc o og1ca orces vana es , o ' Victor Turner (1979:60)

C . . h d t ngly against the idea that ertamly some anthropologists ave reacte s ro d' · 1 1·f . 1

' h n understan mg soc1a I e, on Y the ob1'ective cultural pattern counts w e f •1·b t d . k ' the concept o a I era e as Victor Turner does in his quote, mvo mg

. d Huon Wardle 16 Moises Lino e Silva an . ing social life as an unfold-

h e for re-env1sag d . h" h I , Turner argues er I d system - a rama m w IC

anthropo ogy . h than as a c ose d . "d . . • wry drama rat er h h the counter-mo ermst 1 eas mg 1mprov1sa . I However: t oug l . .

b. ctive free-play is cruc1a. h' d1·scussed in anthropo ogy, It is not su 1e h been muc . • l d t d · h t Turner talks about ave .d bly greater cnt1ca un ers an mg t: ·ous that they have Jed to a c~ns1l eral patterns' and freedom as these o v1 . h. between cu tura of the interrelations ip cohere in self experience. . h two aspects as part of the same pie-

Are there ways of understandmg t esed_ ·de the subjective from the objec-d ned always to 1v1 . h

ture? Or, are we con em . . . haps inevitably reducmg one to t e tive social forces from sub1ect1~ity, per f freedom' _ i.e., when we dive into

' h t lk about our sense o . k. d other? W en we a . ff d in the way that Malmows 1 wante

. . I periencmg o ree om h f the ex1stent1a ex h. •s closely bundled with ot er eatures 1 find that t 1s sense I d

to ru e ~ut - we b di In particular: our feelings of free om seem f 10usness more roa y. ' . l . . . h

o consc . h h cial relation between reflective y imagmmg t e to be bound up wit t e spe . . k . ·11

· · b d"J d materially m 1t. Lev Vygots y gives an 1 us-world and ex1stmg o I y an . f h"ld . tration of this in his discussion of the play-learnmg o c I ren.

The difference between the practical intelligence of ~hildren a?d ani­mals is that children are capable of reconstructing their perception and thus freeing themselves from the given structure of the field.

(1978:35, our italics)

It is precisely what happens during and immediately after this moment _of imaginative abstraction that indicates the stage of learning that the child has reached. Vygotsky refers to this as the zone of 'proximal development' (1978:86). He is working with a classic definition of play as an imaginative activity, where imagination is defined as the capacity to represent something in the mind which is at that moment absent to the senses. Given what we now kno.y about play amongst animals, we may question the special status V~got~ky a~ards human infants in this area. However, for the purposes of this d1scuss1on, Vygotsky is making an important link -between the feeling ~nd me_aning of fr~edor:11 a~d the capacity to imagine. Play involves children m the important_ 1~agm_at1ve wo~k of 'freeing themselves' from reality in order to remake 1t m their own mmds In th,·s way l · ·1 · 1 k d f . · , earnmg enta1 s a cruc1a

Im fo fdreedofm. For ch,_ldren, play, manipulation of the ob1·ect world is

a so ree om rom matenal const · h . ' as a 'given structure'. ram ts - t e resistance the world presents

We will return to how 'freedom' is l"k , l , that this insight into the role of f d

1 e_ P ay later. For now, we can note

. . ree om m sub· · . . m a very different direction to th . ( Jective expenencmg takes us 1 . h e view or abs f .

c ass1c ant ropology that Turner h" hi" h ence o view) provided by that Vygotsky gives to freedom ,·n ig ibg_ te~. The special analytical status se t · ·d J com mat10 · h · • . n m a w1 e y held understand. h n wit imagmmg is also pre-freedom takes the form of escapt? t athth_e most easily available kind of

mto t e ima . . gmation. This is the purely

. . Introduction 17 sub1ect1ve freedom that Malinowsk· d. •

. . 1 1sm1sses but wh t "f · · • a crucial role m enabling the pub!" 'J"b . ' a 1 1magmat1on has important? Once we look at certain,~in~se:::~ that he ~hought _were truly this lens, we may find that the

1 . nographic material through

. . . processua tnad that V t k h. hi" h given reality, imagmative freedom reconstru t· f ygl? s y ig ig ts -

f d . ' c ion o rea 1ty - gives · l clues or un erstandmg not only freedom b t l t·b us vita

d ·11 . u a so 1 erty and autonomy In or er to 1 ustrate the mterpretive difficult" . 1 d ·

· h h • tes mvo ve , we can take here a classic t oug complicated case presented to us b M · L h d

h . h l · 1 Y aunce een ar t In 1s et no og1ca work, Do Kama Leenhardt arg th h C ·

· d · h d · ' ues at t e anaques he live wit urmg the 1900s did not understand h · d. ·d 1· · uman m 1v1 ua 1ty m the way Eur~peans gen~ral!y ~id (Leenhardt (1947)1979). In particular, somewhat akm to Marriott s picture of an Indian type of 'dividual' and permeable self (see the aforementioned), Canaques did not hold th t If-h d . 1· d h . a se

oo imp 1e t. e contmuous and exclusive cohabitation of a mind with a body ~hrough time. To begin with, for them, there was no concept closely mappmg what Westerners call a 'body'. Canaques, nonetheless evidenced a ?otion of self that is familiar in some other respects. For example, Leenhardt mforms us that when they told stories about themselves, rather than recall­ing spatio-temporally distant events back to their mind-body in the present moment, Canaque storytellers would send their soul or ego out to the places where that event is located with their listeners as company. As far as the ~arrator-traveller _is concerned, this all requires spatial-navigational capaci­ties rather than skills of reconstructing dispersed temporal events. There is no problem of hysteresis or time-dependence for Canaques, then, though there 1s the danger of getting lost (1979:84-85). Clearly, Canaques understood the capacities of the self in an utterly different way than, say, Augustine, for ~horn the human ego is thrown contingently into, and must reconstitute ~tself from, the passage of time (which is why the universality of 'free will' Is so crucial as a reference point for him). However, this does not mean, in contrast, that Canaques had no ideas about freedom.

For all the complexity of Canaque concepts of human capacity, they seem to have held quite familiar ideas about the relationship between the ego, which imagines a place for itself in the world, versus the 'me' that is con­strained by its own bodily presence for others. This becomes clearer when Leenhardt describes Canaque ideas about suicide:

For them suicide is a method of passing from the state of living to the state of bao - a state of invisibility and release from the body, where, liberated from the laws of this world, they can incre~se ~heir s1:1"ength tenfold and at the same time regain their dignity by sat1sfymg thetr need

for vengeance. ((1947]1979:39 our italics)

What Leenhardt is indexing with the word 'body' in the sentence is a little unclear, because he has been explicit otherwise that Canaques do not have a

. . a and Huon Wardle . .

18 Moises Ltno e Stlv he general sense 1s plam; free-

b d However, t d .l . . d. g of the o Y· f aterial-bo I y constraints tn

unified und~rst:f ~:rresponds to remo~al ~f:e soul-ego; suicide is specifi­

dom mos~ c os y to certain kinds of desires This is surely freedom as the

order t~ give ~ent nd way of achieving reveng~- an unfamiliar cosmological

II a hberat1on a b . l yed out m . .d ca . f 'do what I want', al e~t pa hat highly dramatized su1C1 es are

ability tLo h rdt goes on to point out t hy but they did not represent a

frame. een a I . n ethnograp ' . d .

wide! documented in Me anes1a . ht have it, because, ~gam, Canaques id

d hy . h as a Western reader mi~ . ble end of hfe, more a personal

eat w1s an 1rretneva . h .

d rstand death to mean h ul 1·s pitted agamst t e material not un e d ma t e so .

h nge In this Canaque ra ' . h world and the value this has for sea c a · b d. d presence m t e . .

nstraints of its em o ie h . . 1·ng ego from its current material co . a e by t e 1magm . I I

thers Suicide 1s an esc P f b d·J presence but, important y, a so a o . . . I loss o o I y ' l h .

Presentation: 1t invo ves a . . h There are important c ues ere, 1t . . f tab1hty to ot ers. . f d

renunc1at10n o accoun b . ry type of imagined ree om.

h might e a pnma • I · would seem, tow at f h If may vary but this seemmg y primary

• h · h ace t e se ' . The constraints w ic th If remove or evade those constramts,

. h h ht that e se can . . A d freedom 1s t e t oug . b d ·Jy connection to the s1tuat10n. ren t

h · k f I sing 1ts own o 1 . . even at t e ns O O

. b Socrates and Callicles m the Gorgzas . f a dialogue etween . . h

points to part O .th this Canaque view. D1scussmg t e

h · ificant resonance WI .

that as a sign b b wronged than to do wrong', Calhcles · · th ·t · ' ettl!r to e

proposdltlon ad~ I tis the contemporary public norms that 'to suffer wrong

conten s accor mg o , S t ' t . f II b t that of a slave . In contrast, ocra es pu s is not the part o a man at a , u

forward the following view:

It would be better for me that my lyre or a chorus that I directed should

be out of tune and loud with discord, and that multitudes of men should

disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of har­

mony with myself and contradict me. (in Arendt 1978:181)

In other words, whether a person is correctly acting the part of 'man' or

'slave' is of little importance compared to the contradictions that appear in

one's understanding of oneself; this difference cannot be resolved simply by

doing what is publicly expected. Socrates points to the difference between

the mores that operate in the conduct of public life versus how the mind

orients itself in its own situation. Hence, whatever liberties or constraints

present themselves in the public arena, there is still the freedom of the mind

to think _other~i~e. W:hen_ Socrates talks of 'being one' he is, Arendt argues,

cont~astm? this 1magmat1ve awareness against the 'chorus' of multiplying

relat10nsh1ps the self finds itself caught up 1·n . I d . h .fy. l · h. f - me u mg t e ram1 mg re a-

~10ns ips ~ slave and master that Callicles refers to O I b . back

mto conscious reflection can the s lf . n y y escapmg

field of action as someth1·ng : frelconstruct the given structure of its meamng u fo ·t 1.£ .

demanding a special kind of freedom r I s own I e. Socrates 1s, then, or autonomy for thought itself.

This kind of capacity for escap . Introduction 19

f e mto refle f

tantly the reedom that conscious f c _1ve awareness - and concomi-

bl . I h ness eels v1 , . . . in a pu IC y s ared reality - seems to ~-a-vis its existence for others

analogy for freedom and autonom • provide at least one fundamental

choanalyst and anthropologist, inde~:sg:::ral. Georges Devereu:,c, the psy­

talks of 'the trauma of the unresponsi· ronfg corollary for this when he . veness o matt ' H . h

ple of Hopi mourners slapping the dead d . er · e gives t e exam-

on purpose to grieve their survivors (l%;,;3i3~~smg th~m of having died

as having maliciously used its subjective f · d · e soul is here understood

world where it should be accountable to t~eoe om or da~tonToh1:11Y to leave the

l h se aroun 1t. 1s calls to mi d

other examp es w en people deliberately absent th l h ? l ' k b ' Th l . . emse ves, as w en a child

p ays pee a oo . e ogic IS not only close to that d b h • . . .d f h C presente y t e ego1s-

t1c su1C1 e o t e anaques, or Kapauku ideas abo t th I

f l d b d . . u e mutua autonomy

o sou an o y, It reiterates the fundamental issue that · ·

f k . d ff . . consciousness 1s

aware o a m o reedom m its own thoughts desires etc th · ·

h l . , , ., at 1s m con-

trast to t e re at1ve unresponsiveness it encounters as a b d 'l · . o 1 y presence m

the matenal wo:ld. The words of a young American to Fred Alford oint

once more to this fissure: p

'.My cu~icle at work is li~e a jail cell. My boss is a tyrant. But in a way

It doe~n t matter. I ~an thmk what I want about him, about work, about

anythmg. In my mmd I'm free. '

Do you ever wish you were a little less free in your mind, and a little

freer at work? I asked.

'I never thought _of it that way', replied Sandra. 'One doesn't really

have much to do with the other, does it?' (Alford 2005:14)

Recognising this kind of subjective freedom certainly does not contradict

Malinowski's view that liberties are more than mere thought-stuff; for free­

dom t? correspond to something actual, we must have freedoms, or lack

them, m our lives in the world, not merely in our ruminations or imaginings.

However, perhaps Vygotsky provides us with the factor that links the two

sides of this impasse. Sure enough, the ruminative freedom of the Canaque,

?r of cubicle worker Sandra, to escape out of their material circumstances

mto the unconstrained life of the soul or ego is a recognizable, if a one-sided,

freedom. But what of the freedom that the child experiences as he or she

plays? Who steps out of the 'given structure of the field' in order to reorder,

and then re-enter, that field? In this case, the freedom has both a reflective

escapist side and an intentional active one - freedom here presents itself not

only in the act of reimagining the perceptual field but also as an effect _in ~he

World and a change to the world. And this is not just a useful descnpt10n

of the role of freedom in childhood play-learning but also of the effects of

imagination-led action in general: there can exist a prod~ctiv~ relationship

between imagined freedoms and practicably attainable liberties. However,

. . e Silva and Huon Wardle

20 Moises Lino . h •p sounds a lot like the dialectics of

d . d that this relanons I

it must be a m1tte

'free will'.

I . Freedom and play . . . Free-p ay. . d . ention fantasy and d1sc1plme.

I liberty an mv ' Play is simultaneous Y (Roger Caillois 2001)

d f dom feel like•' we may well find great diffi.

k d 'What oes ree · ' If w: ar: ~s e ' ·nd of definitive answer. If we were pressed that we might

cult m givmg any ki I freedom is like 'driving fast ... no one else

reach for a suitable_ ana ofgflyyi•:g or falling in Jove', 'being some other better

d' 'the sensation ° ·tfi J · b aroun ' . . . rself' 'mastering a set of d1 cu ties one y one'.

Person while remammg you ' · I d · ·

h · I d seem inadequate and excessive y 1verse; sceptics

The metap ors mvo ve , . I . d .

• f d ·ght wonder if as Levi-Strauss c a1me sarcastically

regardmg ree om mt , 'f d ' . . I

, h p I · n concepts mana or hau, whether ree om is s1mp y 'a

ior t e o ynes1a . . d f h

·fi · , 'an ef'ect quite often produced m the mm o et nographers

myst1 canon - 11 • • h

b · d. people' (1987·47) However, tt 1s also notewort y that the y m 1genous · · . . .

images we tend to conjure up for freedom ha~e ~omething in com~on ~1th

how we describe play behaviour. Just as Ca11!01s separates_ play into ver­

tiginous', 'aleatory', 'mimetic' and 'compet!tive'? so too _fee(mgs of freedom

seem to be distinguishable along rather similar Imes (Ca1ll01s 2001 ).

In discussing Vygotsky's ideas, we have already mentioned play as a situ­

ation where freedom seems intrinsic. The connection can be taken further.

While play produces a kind of order insofar as it 'marks itself off from the

course of the natural process', Huizinga argues, play is nonetheless 'free, [it]

is in fact freedom' (1949:8). Freedom, like play, takes on its concreteness

vis-a-vis the unresponsiveness of everyday life against which it creates its

own field jind the meaning of freedom acquires specificity as a kind of play.

Perhaps as Huizinga argues, then, what we mean by freedom and play is

not simply analogous but identical - perhaps freedom -is play? Even if this

turns out to be a flawed view, it is worth probing further for the insights we

may gain.

~onsi~er, for instance, how Meyer Fortes describes the play behaviour of

children_ m Talela~d, Northern Ghana. Their play reflects the cattle-herding

and agncultural lifestyle: it involves, for example making a cattle kraal

out of dust with twigs for d I , ' . ' . a pen an ocusts wr cattle or setting up an

ancestor shrme out of a p'I f d . h ' .

. 1 1 . 1 e O mu wit a pot shard for the hoe that 1s

a cruc1a e ement m the 're I' h • F education· childr I a s rme. or Tallensi girls and boys, play is

iours and' meani:; ~:~/kn:~f r~anise and integrate diverse adult behav­

adults in their own right d hy he~ ?~ve themselves become competent

an t e act1v1t1es · l d h . •

consequences. There is great tt . mvo ve ave acquired senous

out the adult emphasis on a entiveness to the rules of adult life, but with­

a necessary and b I a so ute order. In their play,

h h ,. Introduction 21

children re earse t e mterests, skills and obli . ,

the world of adults, creating 'experime t . ga~ton~ _presented to them by

pay the penalty for mistakes' (1976:47~: 1;~oct~I hvmg wit?out having to

to experiment without penalty: if we lo ·k a~is ;ey ~er~ 1s the capacity

that Malinowski arrives at in Freedom anod ca·t _t1. e _escnhptions of freedom

11 • tvt tzatton t en th t d fi · ·

would fit we • Agam, perhaps freedom is si 1 1 b' a e mtwn

h f d f I • . mp Y P ay Y another name

T e ree om o p ay 1s paradoxical because th f d 1 ·

. . I . . e ree om to p ay depends

on pnnc1p es governing a reality that truly exists O ts 'd h

l Id h u I e t e parameters

of the p ay wor - t e cattle kraals of Tallensi children's · · · · b II • . lffiagmat1on are

free creat10ns, ut actua y ex1stmg cattle kraals are the d f •

h pro ucts o sen-

ous work w ose parameters and consequences are well defin d G ·11 h e . regory

Bateson 1 ustrates t e paradox at the heart of play with a case of two

dogs at s~ort whe~e on~, plays at biting, without actually biting, the other.

'[T]he actions of play are related to, or denote, other actions of "not

play", he proposes (1976:121), but how can reality divide itself "play" and

"not play" forms which are nevertheless co-dependent?' Bateson's answer

lies in cogniti~e awareness ?f the difference between 'map' and 'territory'.

Dogs at play, like human bemgs, have varying levels of reflective awareness

concerning the difference between how their thoughts map the world versus

how the world is in itself. Between biting and not biting a third option -

playing at biting - offers an alternative, but one that can only exist in the

gap between map and territory. Free-play thus appears as a space of its own

in between how the world is experienced and how it can be imagined.

Similarly, according to Huizinga, in its concreteness, freedom is key in

play and freedom itself manifests as play. This implies that the limits of

freedom are the limits of the field or frame of play behaviour. And yet, as

Huizinga argues - Fortes claims this too - there is no type of serious activity

that has not been formulated initially in the form of play - we arrive at our

notions of the serious, the obligatory and rule-governed at least initially by

way of free-play and free association. This means that we experience free­

dom regarding binding social obligations before we adopt those obligations

as a serious fact of life. For example, we experience the correct practice of

gender roles or scholastic codes first as a kind of freely enacted play and then

as existential facts. Those who have arrived in the world of adult seriousness

may, on this account, dip out of the code of quotidian reality occasionally

by way of various types of sociability, game or phantasy, each of which has

its own arena, rules of play and feeling of freedom. From t~is angle, we can

see how the discourse of freedom can differ from the expenence of freedom

rather as playing differs from the rules or frame provided for_ the game .

Pierre Clastres provides an example of this in his discuss10_n of ~he sol­

itary night-time singing of men who hunt in Ache (Guayaki) ~oci~ty. In

a setting which was particularly dependent on hunting for a hvehhood,

Ache placed a number of obligations on huntsmen including the fact t~at

h . h d that they must share a wue.

t ey must never consume their own catc an d

For the group as a whole, the rules promulgated autonomy an constant

l

. S ·t and Huon Wardle M · s Lino e I va

22 ozse b . distributed within the group and no d game eillg . h .

reciprocity - all capture b thers or agaillSt t e commumty. How.

individual could stand out a hove o s' songs suggested a rebellion against h t the unter h '

evei: Clastres notes t. a . 'd I f dom: 'I am a great unter they would ' . f illd1v1 ua ree f

this_ an assertion° . f k'll' "th my arrows, I am a power ul nature , · h habit o 1 mg WI )' (1977 94) F

sing, I am m t e . Cho cho cho (me, me, me : . or Clas-

incensed and aggressive: ·h . ' song temporarily allowed a mode of abso­

tres the param~ters of mg t-t~m: society where the imperative to exchange

lute individualism to appear m

is otherwise omnipresent:

f h h nter provides a refuge in which to experi-Th the song o t e u · · · •

us d f h · solitude. That is why, once mght has fallen, each ence the free om o ts . h ' h

k · n of the realm that 1s 1s own preserve, w ere, at

man ta es possess10 h h ' d h . · h him If at last he can dream throug 1s wor s t e 1mpos-

peace wit se , · h J · sible 'talk with oneself' . . . The same man exists, t en, as a pure re at10n

in the sphere of exchange of goods and women, and as a monad, so

k · the sphere of language. It is through song that he comes to to spea m • h l · · consciousness of himself as an I and thereby gams t _e eg1t1mate usage

of that personal pronoun. The man exists for himself m and through his

personal song: I sing, therefore I am. (1977:102-103)

The delimited character of this special song world that Ache men enter at a

certain time of day, and the type of personal catharsis it foregrounds shows

Clastres that ultimately the freedom involved is limited; finally, these Ache

men 'cannot but respect the rules of the social game', he argues (1977: 103 ).

Clastres does not give us any further indication of how Ache men imagined

things, so we have little means to judge whether in singing they were indeed

conforming with the 'rules of the social game', or the extent to which the

songs may have constituted a claim, as Sandra put it, that 'in my mind I am

free'. Clastres's description suggests, amongst other things, a characteristic

urge in mid-twentieth-century social anthropology (already described here)

towards seeing society as a totality regarding which the human self is a

part. At t~e same time, he also notes the urge towards individual freedom

as somethmg pe~haps natural, certainly inevitable given the particular social

forces ~nd confli~ts at work. This, we should remind ourselves, is the view of

the social that Victor Turner wished to escape from when he argued against

anthropology's tendency to r d h b ' . 1

"' 1

egar uman su Jects of study as bearers of an 1mpersona cu ture" ... deter · d b . . logical "forces" "va • bl ,, mme Y social, cultural or social psycho-

' na es or "pres ,, f . . freedom is crucial since s • •11.f . sures O Vanous kmds'. For Turner,

oc1a 1 e 1s not a t JI · h people may believe this is th b . c ua Y systematic (however muc

improvisation by particula e case) Jut is rather the expression of constant . r actors a ways t • . h

will make use of how th .11 . rymg out which symbols t ey ' ey w1 weight · ·11

certam gestures, where they WI

Place themselves on the stage of a t ' Introduction 23

c ton make f . . rial props, and so on. ' use O certam kmds of mate-

A problem which may arise in our . . . .

aphor - life is drama - is that wh1'Je _tm~u1t1vbe reaction to Turner's core met-' 1 gives ack th f J f ·

tion to people rather than viewing the e ree-p ay o tmprovisa-

the extension of the metaphor of draZ: a~;~:~~: ~~~s 0 ~ a social totality,

world and play world - the living individual . 1stmct10n between real • h · l . Is now an actor playing ill a t eatnca representation, but a represent t ' f h a part

· d · · f · a 10n ° w at? In the drama turg1c escnpt1on o social experience the di'ff f f d -

d . , erence o ree om and rule-

governe experience blurs. Comprehending the J1·ves of th d

k . o ers as a rama to

s~me extent ta es a"".ay wit~ ~ne hand (the reality principle) what it offers

with the ~ther (emot1onal s1gmficance). We may, nonetheless, agree on the

ontogenet1c status of freedom in this account - what was once the focus of

free-play becomes something held to in all seriousness in the moment f

wilful action; improvisation is deployed towards an intentional and earn~t

construction of reality.

For_ all its u_seful~ess in reintroducing the improvisatory and the playful

back mto a d1scuss1on of the social, what the metaphor 'life is a drama'

obscures, then, is the dimension of wanting or willing in the making of

reality. While from the outside, the excited use of symbols and gestures in a

given event may look like drama - if we are unaffected by its consequences -

to the person involved, that world is serious and consequential. It is the

relativity of the symbols and gestures in relation to our point of view that

makes it seem dramatic. It is notable, in this regard, that a recurrent element

of ecstatic religion is precisely aimed at temporarily, or even permanently,

muting the will. Aldous Huxley captures an aspect of this when he describes

the experience of taking the hallucinogen mescaline. Everyday conscious­

ness involves a narrowing and specifying of perception and worldview: mes­

caline enables an opening up of sensation; a freeing of perception from the

self's wilful drive to organise reality in a particular way:

Though the intellect remains unimpaired and though perception is enor­

mously improved, the will suffers a profound change for the worse.

The mescaline taker sees no reason for doing anything in particular and

finds most of the causes for which at ordinary times, he was prepared

to act and suffer, profoundly unin;eresting. He can't be_ bothered with

them for the good reason that he has better things to think about. ' (1994:13)

Th . b , k h £ of a greatly intensified

ese 'better things to thillk a out ta e t e orm . h b fil . 1. • l f 't If before 1t as een -

awareness of how the world 1s qua 1tat1ve Y or 1 se

tered into ontological categories. For example,

. If with such problems as Where? -

At ordinary times the eye c?ncern~ itse h ~' Contrastingly, under the

How far? -How situated ill relat10n tow at.

, I

. a nuun '#ardle 24 Moises Lino e Stlva an . dominance. The mind was con-

' ce lost ,ts pre b . d . effects of mescaline spa .. . d I ations but with emg an meaning.

d not with measures an oc ' ([1954)1994: 9) cerne ,

k' d A Huxley notes, it is the type of free­

This is freedom of a dis~inct m_ · ... /me and Free Will (1910), where, for

. B n discusses m 1 1 l dom that Henn ergso . f, geness' we allow ourse ves to escape

. templation o oran 1· . f d f h example, m our con . 'oran e'· subjectively the qua ,ty is ree rom t e

from our preconception of g · rs as a preformed ontological assem-

h Id no longer appea · · 994 11) Th ' category; t e wor d'ated array of qualities ( 1 : . 1s

d . t ad offers an unme ' d . . blage an ms e b J'k play in Vygotsky's or Fortes's escnptlon,

is perceptual fre_e-p1la_y, . uthun

1 r: contemplativeness of an uncontained self

· · dialectica · m it t e pu h f B ddh' it ,s non-. b d d orld. There are suggestions ere o u ,st

blen1s with an udn houn et. : of becoming 'no one' that Mitsui describes for

self-hberat1on an t e prac ,c . . . h

h. y · ( hapter 2) Of course this sub1ect1ve state, or per aps

Muneyos ' anag1 c . ' . f f d f · I tt rly different to the ego-assertive songs o ree om o

non-state, 1s a so u e · h 'd

Ache hunters whose motif is a wilful 'me, me, ~e'. H~re :'e m,g t cons1 er

r. M. Lewis's observation that ecstasis has particular_ significance ~or people

living under atomized or highly individualised cond1t1ons where 1t pres~nts

a release from a sense of isolation (1971) . In contrast, Clastres d~scnbes

Ache self-assertion as an episodic expression of individuality in a social field

more generally marked by the absorption of ego within patterns of exchange.

Finally, what Huxley describes is also unlike the distinction t?at Sandra

makes when she talks of being a 'slave' in her cubicle but 'free' m her own

mind: the feeling of there being an inhibiting boundary between those two

worlds - outer, bodily and inner, mental - is here no longer primary. At the

same time, we may begin to notice a continuum at work in which 'freedom'

takes on different significances with regard to the organisation of self and

world at different moments and within distinct kinds of perceptual space.

When h_e analysed Tallensi play, Fortes did so teleologically in terms of the

achievement of adulthood, but the contrast of childhood play and adult seri­

ousness seems overstated in some ways. Even if we can -agree what it is that

'ends' in adulthood, surely improvisation does not cease even there because

the experimentation regarding truth, seriousness and legality - 'absolute

matunty :- never finalises itself. For Tallensi, while the knowledge of chil­

dren ':as mc~mplete in relation to that of adults, adulthood was also incom·

plete m relation to the knowledge of the ancestors Th . 1 f · · · d · • e prox1ma arena o imagmmg an actmg never stops ch · · 1 • th f · . . angmg m re ation to self-understanding

ere ore 1mprov1sat1on as free-play is I k . '

than that the living individual cann ka ways at wor if for no other reason

ot now what the ancestors want.

Freedom as common sense freed . . . ' om ID social science

Although Peter Loizos, for example I

avoided the theme of freed b ' aments that for too long anthropology om ecause the d ' · 1·

iscip me was under 'the spell

• Introduction 25

of Durkheim and Marx, and so preoccu · d • h

cultures, rather than those ~f individuals'%~ B;~er t;;9~:~blems of whole

freedom, as :'e have seen, IS not necessarily tied up to inl)'.;heteme of

writing at a time when anthropology was almo t I . I ,v, ua '~· Even

963 86) s exc us,ve Y group oriented

Leach ( 1 : was nonetheless able to point out a k h 1 . '

d. t· ey ant ropo og,cal

pre ,cameo .

since the word freedo~ is a powerful symbol in the ideology of the

Western world - especially the American part of it _ it is only natu­

ral that 'Yestern anthropologists should endeavor to demonstrate that

Freedom 1s a value esteemed by the Noble Savage.

There is a hint of a larger problem here: an anthropology which endeavours

to demonstrate that other people around the world esteem the same values

that Westerners, particularly Americans, do, can only be considered prob­

lematic. However, at the same time, Fischer and Marcus (1986) may have

a point when they argue that an anthropology historically rooted in the

Western world cannot ignore its own conditions of possibility and cannot

afford to ignore what impact its own powerful symbols have when it comes

to understanding life as lived by others.

Leach's suspicions regarding 'freedom' as a word that was no longer rel­

evant for thinking about how human societies organised themselves reflect

a concern with an inherited set of ideas about freedom which no longer

seemed to plausibly fit the circumstances of post-war Europe and America.

In contrast, for thinkers of the Enlightenment, like the Scottish philosopher

Adam Ferguson, human freedom had been a self-evident truth made obvi­

ous in the diverse choices humans made with regard to their 'wants' and

'opinions' - their way of life. The contrast between an Amerindian living on

the Orinoco versus a prince in a European palace made the multiplicity of

the possible choices and freedoms abundantly clear.

The occupations of men, in every condition, bespeak their freedom of

choice, their various opinions, and the multiplicity of wants by which

they are urged . . . The tree which an American on the banks of the

Oroonoko has chosen to climb for retreat, and the lodgment of his fam­

ily, is to him a convenient dwelling. The sopha, the vaulted dome, and

the colonnade do not more effectually content their native inhabitant.

' (Ferguson [1782)2011:10)

In the same vein, Kant defines what he called pragmatic anthrop?lo~y a~ the

study of what human beings 'make of themselves' as 'free-actmg . bemgs.

This type of inquiry he opposed to physiological anthropology, ~hi~h con­

sists of an exploration of what 'nature makes of the human bemg (~ant

[1798)2009· 3) For Kant as for other Enlightenment figures, t~ere is an

· · ' • · II · b t there 1s also an aspect of being human that is phys10log1ca Y given, u

• . d Huon Wardle

26 Moises Uno e S,/va an ticulai; Kant highlighted that the

. I de. In par ' 1 · . . h

• subi·ecnve Y ma derstand our own 1ves are s1gnifi-pect t at is deploy to un 1· . . h

as d oncepts we d"fference to our 1vmg m t e world chernas an c . It makes a I I f b . ,

s f own making. 1. b Thus we spontaneous y a ncate

candy o our pts we ive y. . . . f b . .

h. h hernas and conce

1. • these acts of 1magmat1ve a ncation

w IC sc f own ives, . b d , some dimensions o our I alter reality as given, ecome, to a apt a

h gh they do not absolute Y f i·mal freedom. One purpose of prag-t ou k zone o prox . I I

hrase of Vygots Y, our . d f . quiry was, then, precise y to exp ore the p I s a km o in . f matic anthropo ogy a f d m in practice. In certain areas o social

1. . f human ree o h d h . h extent and im1ts o d the essence of growt an c ange m uman inquiry, this view of ~ree 0;t1 as grow cultures' proposes the anthropolo-

b etained: we can . . h . groups has een r . h b h way is a very mce expenence; t ere 1s a

M F 'wh1c y t e ' gist Tom c eat, h ' d b dding and harvesting; there seems to be

Planting and a growt an 74a . ~) wth' (19 "Xll

death and new gro th·. 0·ptimistic view when Fred Alford asked

H wever in contrast to is ' d b 'f d ' . h 0 ' . · f mants what they understoo y ree om m t e

h's young American 10 or h" d 1· 1 1 h d !most uniformly to see t 1s wor as 1tt e more early 2000s t ey seeme , a ' I I f d

' f ne kind of out-of-reach cu tura orm - power an than a synonym or O · F d h d

.,.. h y was to have freedom and vice versa. ree om a money. 1o ave mone . . d k · little to do with the exercise of imagmat10n towards share tas s. Preemi-

nently, freedom was underitood as an obj~ctive me~sure _of the power to 'do what you want', with this, in turn, bemg quantified m money ter~s.

Alford was dismayed at the degree to which, because they felt they had ht­

tie absolute control over their circumstances, freedom had come to seem

illusory to them.

Maybe money can't buy happiness, but money buys freedom. Free­

dom means having enough money to do what I want,' said one young woman ...

Most talked in these terms. Freedom is not about being left alone

b! others; nor is freedom about such effete rights as free speech. Many

disparaged the concept. Partly because they took it for granted but also because it doesn't matt 'f · ' ' d what you want.

er I you can say what you want 1f you can t 0

(Alford 2005:1-2)

At first sight, these responses see . . tions on the kind of al' d fm remmiscent of Georg Simmel's observa-

d ienate reedom k d b h emands little of the ind· 'd 1 . . provo e y a mass society t at

ivi ua as a c1t1zen:

If freedom swings to play to extreme formeaxtt?mes; if the largest group . . affords greater

· ions and If · mis~nthropic detachment t b ma ormations of individualism, to egoism - th h" . ' o aroque and d 1· en t is is merely th moo y ife styles to crass

e consequence of the wide~ group's

Introduction 27

requiring less of us, of its being less concerned wi"th d h f · h . d · f h f us, an t us o 1ts

lesser m ermg o t e ull development even of perverse impulses. (Simmel in Levine 1971:270-271)

But Alfor~'s informants seem to have gone beyond this kind of alienated

individuahsi:n: ~o~ the~, ~ree~om is no longer understood as a direct expres­sion of the md1v1dual s hvelmess - a defiant 'acting out' in the face of an

uninterested world. Rather, subjective action of even this kind has lost its

meani~g . because it has bec?m~ _a dependent variable of one objectively determmmg factor - the availab1hty of money. The logic here seems to run

somewhat like this: if all opportunities can be priced on the market, then

it follows that 'free choice' is simply a function of relative access to the

medium of exchange: this is freedom understood as an 'opportunity cost' in the micro-economics of everyday life.

To what extent this kind of view reflects the actual effects of 'structural

violence' or the influence of a social scientific devaluation of individual free­

dom during the twentieth century, it is impossible to say, but undoubtedly

the pessimism of Alford's informants reflects a stance that was mainstream

for much of the latter part of that century. James Laidlaw (2002) argues that

the lack of research on freedom in anthropology is mostly a consequence

of the deep influence of Durkheimian social determinism on the discipline:

'Durkheim's social is effectively Immanuel Kant's notion of the moral law,

with the all-important change that the concept of human freedom, which

was of course central for Kant, has been neatly excised from it' (Laidlaw

2002:312). However, something equally interesting is the imprecision with

which freedom is commonly debated, when it is debated in social science at

all. Even though the social determination of individual choices could not be

shown in any decisive way, social scientists nonetheless tended to hold to the

idea that 'free choice' was incompatible with the idea of empirical causality

in general and was hence an illusion:

In the social sciences ... [m]any of our ... propositions are only sta­

tistically true and hold good only within particular historical circum­

stances ... If these conditions make trouble for us as social scientists,

remember they are a great advantage to humanity, by leaving men the

illusion of choice. I speak of the illusion because I myself believe that

what each of us does is absolutely determined ... The illusion of free

will . . . is a vital illusion . . . The most amusing case is the Marxists,

who theoretically believe in macroscopic laws ... but who will not

allow the laws alone to produce the result. (Homans 1967:103-104)

George Homans determinism ('I myself believe'), like that of many other

social scientists of this period up to the present, is riven with doubt and

.1 d Huon Wardle

. s Lino e S1 va an . . . 28 Moise . b Id claim now, we may ask, if hfe is inde d

d. his O Id h Id· e contradiction. Rea_ m~ what possible difference cou up o . mg the 'illu.

, bsolutely determined' Wh t 1·s the difference between this convolut d a h . make) a h . . f e

sion' of free c ~ice at h·ow people act, based on t eir view o things, has

stance and the idea th . d ff cts (not least for themselves)? As Brad!

d 1. / achieve e e . ey tangible an ,ree Y d •n the previous century, perspectives such a

h d I dy argue 1 . s and Green a a rea f following the mistaken logic that since the act

, to stem rom I f . Homans s seem h gency must be the resu t o some previous act

results from the ~gednt, ~rt~ ini·ect a hopeless degree of ambiguity into the (1884). But all this oes is

word '.agent'. h H mans's persist even when (as Homans admits) we are 'Beliefs' sue as O f •

) • d·cate a location of the cause or an act except m the unable (ever to m 1 · · Wh . . . . d motivation of the agent m quest10n. ere Kant envis-1magmanon an I f h ·

d d f What humans make of themse ves out o t e1r freedom age a stu y o . . . ,

-WWII social science viewed itself as on a parallel track to the physi-post · l b h. d fi . . cal sciences. Sociology and social anthropo ogy were y t 1s e mt10n the

study of what society makes of the human bei~g. ~~i~temologically, there

was simply no place in the mainstream academic d1v1S1on of labour for the

kind of human-centred intellectual pursuit that Kant envisaged. Thus there

came to be very little if any room for a discussion of freedom at all, except

as a sign or artefact of a certain system of governance. Certain versions of

Foucault (Foucault himself seems to have left the possibilities of freedom

open), like that presented by Nikolas Rose in his book Governing the Soul,

envisage freedom as a peculiar feature of how modern subjectivity is con­

structed. Moderns are, he argues,

Obliged to be free . . . modern selves have become attached to the pro­

ject of freedom, have come to live in terms of its identity, and to search

for th~ means _to enh_ance that autonomy through the application of

expef!ise. In this matnx of power and freedom the modern self has been born.

(Rose 1990:258)

This all begs reflection on th I · d f non-moder I f e mu titu e of cases already mentioned here o

n peop es or whom aut d f . I of the essence Are II th onomy an reedom are also seeming Y

. a ese cases merely d I b . f h d em psychic complex d. d secon ary e a orat10ns o t e mo -

case can be made· m1rdecte outw~rd? This seems far-fetched . The opposite

R d. ' o ems - unlike h w· d b a m - often seem to see f d say t e mnebago as describe Y

h b ree om not as an b . f b . uma~, ut rather as somethin ~ v1ous act connected to emg

ern pomt of view freedom th g ~ 0stlY contmgent: from this kind of mod­

played and is not of great' I oug much talked about is rhetorically over-p . re evance tor f 1· ' omts to another concern the . A I _e as ived. Perhaps Rose's critique

seen ~s an attack against the~.' _nydpart1cular definition of freedom can be practically ·1 bl im1te range f h

avai a e to moder O uman freedoms actually or ns.

Introduction 29

As Englund points out, attempts at d fi . effects: 'What appears as freedom f e nmg free~om have paradoxical

from another.' For him though 'a ro~ l~ne p~rspective can be mere trivia ' ' crucia issue 1s whether th h

the public sphere are prisoners of their particular . o,s~ w o occ~py

tio~ ~o rethi~k the promise of freedom is consta!e:~;~~;~ie}~~~ obhga­

polit1cal and mtellectual quandaries' (1996·4) n· . h . ~or~!,

f l'b • . . · · 1scussmg t e nationalist dis-course o 1 erat1on m Afnca, he notes a series of shi·ft f f 1.6 · f I · I . s, rom a ocus on 1 _ eranon rom co oma powers mto other, newer notions off d h

· h b d • . ree om, sue as a human ng ts- ase views. Changed discourses open but also I h · ·

. , c ose t e c1rcmt for definmg f~ee~o~ - new freedoms entail new prisoners' (Englund 2006:4 ).

Rather than 1~trms1cally free, modern individuals often describe themselves

as suspended m webs of causation over which they have little ultimate con­

trol: any particular 'freedoms' they may possess seem minor if not trivial

with re_gard t~ the gra~d social sc~e~e. There may instead be an emphasis on

deploymg vanous tactics of estabhshmg a more attractive position for the self

in a social field that 'free will' cannot in any absolute way change.

Considering different tactics that can bring freedom to the self, the posi­

tionality of the ethnographer also deserves profound scrutiny when it comes

the production of anthropological knowledge. Would the privileged position

of 'researcher' imply more freedom to anthropologists than the position of

'ethnographic subjects'? Or would the opposite be the case? Pipyrou (chap­

ter 4 ), concerns herself exactly with the implications of her own positional­

ity in relation to different civil society groups in South Italy. She invites us to

reflect: 'How can data generated out of intimidation and fear, or when the

researcher is completely out of control of the situation, be fairly assessed?'

Perhaps, such a question becomes even more engaging because anthropolo­

gists more often than not conduct their work in contexts in which they

assume a position of authority (and freedom) superior to others? Or would

it just be that 'academic freedom' sometimes is taken for granted? Regard­

less of the exact answer, any anthropology of freedom needs to concern

itself with the implications of asymmetric relations of authority and free­

dom in its own production.

Towards an ontological understanding of freedom

Regarding the very pragmatic puzzles that ethnographic research into free­

dom presents, an ontological approach can prove helpful. Awarene~s ~f

the existence of freedom seems often to start from the presence of a si?m­

fier of freedom in the concrete research context, extending fro~ there mto

h . . f d · · daily use In this sense an t e vanous meamngs that ree om acquires m · '

anti-foundational metaphysics of freedom arises for t~e _researcher,(~;;~~

on practical research needs, which is something that Wilham James

Would possibly call a pragmatic metaphysics. ·d d I h ·mportance an prece ence

The historical focus of anthropo ogy on t e I I . I d. nsions of the

of meaning has left discussions over the onto ogica ime

. d Huon Wardle L . e Silva an .

JO Moises mo d rexplored when 1t comes to freed . ehow un e Id b ( d om.

Phic enterpnse som f knowing, cou e an has recent( ethnogra · · al way O Th ' ff Y

h Phy as an empmc logical concerns. is o ers a Part1· I Et nogra , d to onto h h . a

) much more attune D 'da (1997) and ot ers ave identifi d become I that ern I , . e response to the prob em; h 'the metaphysics of the ogos . Derrida argues

'th what has been calle t e_ 'The word is ( ... ) already a constituted w1 . taphys1cs • h · · f that in Jogocentr~c ~e ) is always already 1~ t e ~os1t10n o the signi-

unity.' 'That the s1gnifi~d (. · · proposition withm which the metaphysics tly innocent fl ,

fier is the apparen d onsciousness, must re ect upon. (Derrida , f sence an c . I 'd bl

of the logos'. o pre to challenge this seemmg y unav01 a e . unity of

1997:93) It is necessarlf h w the supposed precedence of meanmg relies

d d nder me o · the wor an to u 1.t. s and imaginative connotations of freedom

h current qua I te d d ' . upon ot er con 1 . 1 dimension of our un erstan mg of freedom

th. d the onto og1ca . As mgs stan ' . d xplored as Jong as we remam preoccupied with . d ·1 J'£ remains un ere . m ai Y I e A L I u reminds us, 'The signifiers bemg goes beyond its the word alone. s ac a • · h l · h Id

. d 1 ,, h' h is to signify. As ant ropo og1sts, we s ou also "designate roe w IC . ff h h

d · h 'the fact of signifiers havmg e ects ot er t an mean-be concerne wit h . h b d 'I . . . fl , (' 5 mic 2004). Beyond words t ere 1s t e o I y 1magmative mg e rects m u • f h ' l 'f

• f 1·f . h nee our emphasis in the title o t 1s vo ume on reedom practice o I e. e

in practice'. . . h d •z ·b , What, then, finally, is the relat10nsh1p bet~een_ t e w_or . 1 erada (as

in 'travesti /iberada') and 'liberty' or 'freedo~ (Lmo e ~il:a m c_hapter 7),

or 'wayegreru' and 'slave' (Gow) as experiences of hfe._ An 1mport~nt

aim in any exploration of freedom from an anthropological perspective

should be to understand what people with whom we share our enter­

prise think and how they live freedom themselves. In order to reach an

understanding of how freedom is experienced by an 'other' (beyond one­

self), an ontological discussion about the basis for our understanding is

surely desirable. Quoting Quine (1981:2): 'Little can be done in the way

of tracking thought processes except when we can put words to them.

For something objective that we can get our teeth into we must go after

the words.' In this sense, words, and language in general, can be used

as a means to enter a variety of dimensions regarding the existence of

freedo1? .- b~yon,d meaning. 'Freedom' as logos may index precisely the

~uthonzm~ rule that fr~edom as free-play is intent on bending, extend­

'.ng, reshap,mg - or b_reakmg. The terminology used - 'liberty', 'freedom',

auto~omy - !11ay, mdeed, be deployed to hide some other or further unvoiced proximal claim ab t . l f W; di , d. . . ou , or potent1a or, being human (see Huon

ar e s 1scuss10n m chapter 3).

Regarding the apparent vague f d . . . cal grounds we argue th II ne~s O

. a efimt1on of freedom on ontolog1-, ata specific d ' 'd · ·

seems to be a characteri·st· f d 1.0 IV! uat1ves tend to be vague. This

, 1c o wor s m g l F h as dog' or 'desk' are al enera • or example terms sue

f . so very vague M d 'ff . ' .. 0 obiect go under the nam 'd k' · a?y 1 erent obiects and qualities

vagueness only of classifica~on e;nd ~t Qum~ ( 19 81: 13) reminds us, 'this is of existence.' The fact that the most

varied different physical obi· Introduction 3 l . f d k ects count a 'd k ' .

existence o es s. Equally th f s es s 1s not a p bl f l'f , e act that h ro em or the

and I e events could come to b t e most varied acti If bl e counted • ons, concepts

itse a pro em. Quite the cont T . as mstances of freedo . . d rary. his Id b m, 1s not m

unwante consequences that foll f cou e a remedy to so f h d I 'd ow rom r . . me o t e

free om, a ongs1 e the overbear· estnct1ve semantic defin•t· f mg power th . 1 ions o

tend to assume ~t the expense of others . at certam meanings of freedom

that no translation can absolute) d · Q~me (1981) has famously argu d · J h Y etermme . e

phys1ca t eory can exclusively det . . meanmg and that no meta-

tion of freedom proposed here ext er;m~ existence. The ontological defini­

exist under a variety of understanden1· st ehhop.e that freedom may come to · . ngs - t at 1t c •

of meanmgs, even various, conflictin and a~ assume a wide variety

we may gain access to the further 'pg .61

cfontradictory ones. From here . oss1 e reed , h F

to. Such a radical understanding of the com ~~s t at oucault refers

experience can only be achieved whe f d plexmes of freedom as lived

precedence of meaning itself. n ree om has been liberated from the

Notes

1 'I've Won a Day in Court for Two Chim s' N Sc' . 2 Cf. Oxford English Dictionary: 'Liberal d. e~ &ient1St May 1~,_2015.

• a Jective noun, definition 3a.

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