Grammars of liberalism

Abstract

Liberalism has been fundamental to the making of the modern world, at times shaping basic assumptions as to the nature of the political, and in other cases existing as a delimited political project in contention with others. Across its long history, liberal projects have taken a diverse range of forms, which resist easy reduction to a single logic or history. This diversity, however, has often escaped anthropological attention. In this introduction to our special section on Grammars of Liberalism, we briefly trace this historical diversity, interrogate anthropological approaches to conceptualising liberalism and offer a broad framework for studying liberalism that remains attentive to both continuity and difference. First, we argue for attention to how the political claims made by liberal projects unfold at the levels of values, their interrelations (morphology) and the underlying rules governing the expression and combination of values, and their intelligibility as liberal (grammar). Second, we argue for empirical attention to how values are expressed and liberal projects assembled across different social forms. We argue that this approach enables anthropology to grasp the diversity of liberal political projects and subject positions while still allowing scholars to approach liberalism critically and to interrogate its underlying logics.

‘We were not emotional enough’: Cultural liberalism and social contract imaginaries in the Colombian peace process

“…It consolidated in the post-war era, when liberal democracy was imagined to triumph over two anti-liberal others , fascism and communism (Fawcett, 2014). While liberal governance is associated with tenets such as the rule of law, individual rights and freedoms, the market economy and the separation of church and state, anthropologists have also analysed liberalism as a world-making project which travels and mutates across time and space (Ansell, 2021; Dzenovska, 2018; Fedirko et al, 2021; Schiller, 2013). Despite variations across societies, or ‘liberalisms’ (Mouffe, 2005: 10), and debate and pluralism in liberal canons, liberalism retains a common outlook, including the centrality of the rational individual, and the idea that states can improve society using objective science and knowledge (Gray, 2003).…”

“…Despite variations across societies, or ‘liberalisms’ (Mouffe, 2005: 10), and debate and pluralism in liberal canons, liberalism retains a common outlook, including the centrality of the rational individual, and the idea that states can improve society using objective science and knowledge (Gray, 2003). Anthropology of liberalism examines ‘actually existing’ (rather than ‘ideal’) liberalisms, exploring how people appropriate, mobilise and reinvent liberal values in different cultural contexts, and how these values intertwine with everyday practices and institutions, shaping both formal politics and intimate relationships and subjectivities (Fedirko et al, 2021).…”

Liberalism in fragments: oligarchy and the liberal subject in Ukrainian news journalism

“…But we might also question whether such exclusion necessarily delineates the 'borders' of liberalism. I propose that when thinking about the shape and constitution of actually-existing liberal formations in Ukraine and other contexts where liberalism is not hegemonic, we should not reproduce liberal activists' exclusion of those who do not conform to their visions of the 'grammar' of liberal practice (Fedirko et al 2021). We should be able to account for the fact that liberal ideas gain purchase not just among groups directly involved in projects of liberal reform and rule, which establish specific institutions for realising their ideals, but also among people who are excluded or opposed by such institutions, and who might nevertheless rework and reproduce elements thereof in ways that suggest a more fragmented liberalism than activist liberals would like to acknowledge.…”

“…Liberalism is everywhere in contemporary anthropology, yet almost everywhere it seems out of focus: a blurred background of ‘Western culture’ against which ethnographers examine the world of ethnographic difference (cf. Candea 2021; Fedirko et al 2021; Mazzarella 2018; Schiller 2015). Only relatively recently have anthropologists turned the ethnographic lens onto liberalism itself, exploring both contexts in which hegemonic liberalism constitutes common political sense and those where liberal projects can be more clearly seen as narrow mobilisations coalescing around specific group interests (Dzenovska 2018; Englund 2011; Hadley 2010; Mazzarella 2018; Schiller 2013).…”

Reality, Realism and the Future

“…Likewise, the curators of Social Anthropology ponder the (im)possibilities of teleological thinking in two special issues honing in on utopia (Blanes and Bertelsen 2021) and liberalism (Fedirko et al 2021), respectively. Both are teleological projects that have a seed of disappointment, partiality and incompleteness at the very heart of their respective ideologies.…”