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Abstract

This essay engages with current debates in the anthropology of ethics regarding the relationship between freedom and moral codes. By describing a particular understanding of the Italian concept of doppia morale (double morality) amongst LGBTQ activists in Bologna, and applying it to a number of examples, I show how it is possible to relate to moral codes or injunctions in such a way as to allow for their betrayal in certain circumstances. This claim – that one may subscribe to a code in a manner that allows for it to be broken – supports another that is foundational to some variants of the anthropology of ethics: that freedom does not lie merely in the absence of rules.

Keywords

Activism ethics freedom Italy moral codes morality

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Freedom in the code: The anthropology of (double) morality

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