Laura Nader facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Laura Nader
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Nader (right) in 2013
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| Born | September 30, 1930 Winsted, Connecticut, U.S.
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| Education | Wells College (BA) Radcliffe College (PhD) |
| Occupation | Anthropologist |
| Parent(s) | Rose Nader (mother) |
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| Awards | See below. |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | University of California, Berkeley |
| Doctoral advisor | Clyde Kluckhohn |
Laura Nader (born February 16, 1930) is a famous American anthropologist. She has taught Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley since 1960. She was the first woman to get a permanent teaching job (called a tenure-track position) in that department. Laura is also the older sister of well-known U.S. activist Ralph Nader. Her other siblings are Shafeek Nader and Claire Nader, who also work to help communities.
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Early Life and Education
Laura Nader grew up in Winsted, Connecticut. Her father, Nathra, owned a restaurant and store. This place was often used for many important political talks. Her mother, Rose, was a schoolteacher. She cared a lot about fairness and justice. Rose would often share her opinions by writing letters to newspapers.
Laura's older brother, Shafeek, and her older sister, Claire, have worked to help the public. Her younger brother, Ralph, is also famous for his public interest work. A writer named Gamal Nkrumah once wrote about Laura Nader. He noted her strong connection to her father, who moved from Lebanon for political reasons. Nkrumah also mentioned that her older brother first suggested she study anthropology.
Laura Nader earned her first degree, a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), in Latin American Studies in 1952. She studied at Wells College in Aurora, New York. Later, she received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard University (through Radcliffe College) in 1961. Her main teacher there was Clyde Kluckhohn. As part of her studies, she did fieldwork in a Zapotec village in Oaxaca, Mexico. She also did research later in South Lebanon.
What Laura Nader Studies
Laura Nader is interested in many areas of anthropology. She studies how different cultures handle law and solve disagreements. She also looks at how families are organized in different places. Nader explores the ways professionals think and act. Her research covers the Middle East, Mexico, Latin America, and the United States.
She has attended many meetings about how law should be more connected to society. Often, law is seen as separate from other parts of life. Nader has edited and published essays from these meetings. She has also written several books about the anthropology of law. This work has made her a very important person in this field. She has been a visiting professor at famous law schools like Yale, Stanford, and Harvard Law School. In the 1960s, she even taught a class at the Boalt School of Law.
Solving Problems in Different Cultures
Some of Nader's work looks at how people solve problems in the Zapotec village she studied. She noticed that people in the village often talk face-to-face to solve disagreements. Village judges try to find solutions that are fair to everyone, instead of just blaming one person. Nader believes this way of solving problems shows how their society, economy, and other parts of their culture work.
In contrast, Nader found that in the United States, disagreements often become very heated. People tend to blame one side, and conflicts can even lead to violence. The groups people might need to challenge can be very large and powerful. Nader believes that the types of cases people bring to court show where there is stress in a community's social structure.
Understanding "Harmony Ideology"
Nader has written a lot about "harmony ideology." This idea is based on the belief that conflict is always bad. It suggests that a healthy society is one where people get along and avoid arguments. In her book Harmony Ideology, Nader argues that missionaries spread this idea to colonized people around the world. This happened before and helped with military takeovers.
However, Nader says the Zapotec people used harmony ideology in a different way. They kept the appearance of "harmony" while doing a lot of legal actions secretly. Nader believes this helped the Zapotec keep their independence from the Mexican government.
Nader also argues that harmony ideology has influenced some legal ideas in the United States since the 1960s. For example, the idea of a "litigation explosion" (too many lawsuits) came up. Also, Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) became popular. ADR tries to move "unimportant cases" out of court. It focuses on getting along and finding a middle ground, rather than talking about unfairness. Many civil rights cases from the 1960s might have been seen as "unimportant" at the time.
Over time, Nader became more interested in how culture controls people. She called this "controlling processes." This was also the name of a popular class she taught for many years. She also created the term "trustanoia." This is the opposite of paranoia. It describes how Americans often trust that someone will always take care of them. They believe everyone, including politicians, acts in their best interest.
"Studying Up" in Anthropology
One of Laura Nader's most famous ideas came from her 1969 article, "Up the anthropologist—Perspectives gained from studying up." This article was one of the first to ask anthropologists to study powerful groups. Instead of only studying people who were colonized or powerless, Nader suggested studying the "colonizers" and the "culture of power."
This idea encouraged many anthropologists to start "studying up." Nader's work has made her known as "the moral conscience" of American anthropology after Franz Boas.
Awards and Recognition
Laura Nader has received many awards for her important work:
- Morgan Spanish Prize, Wells College
- Wells College Alumnae Award, Wells College
- Radcliffe College Alumnae Award
- Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
- Woodrow Wilson Center for Advanced Study in Washington, D.C.
- Harry Kalven Prize (1995), Law and Society Association
- American Anthropological Association, Distinguished Lecture Award (2000), American Anthropological Association
- CoGEA (Committee on Gender Equity in Anthropology) Award (also known as "The Squeaky Wheel Award") (2010)
Films Featuring Laura Nader
- Laura Nader (1966) To Make the Balance (33 minutes)
- Laura Nader (1980) Little Injustices- Laura Nader Looks at the Law (60 minutes)
- Laura Nader (2011) Losing Knowledge: Fifty Years of Change (40 minutes)
See also
In Spanish: Laura Nader para niños
