Laura Nader (born February 16, 1930) is an American anthropologist. She has been a Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley since 1960.{{cite journal |author=Laura Nader |year=2004 |title=The Link Between Justice and International Law |journal=Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology |volume=10 |issue=3 |pages=297–299 |doi=10.1207/s15327949pac1003_6 |issn=1532-7949}} She was the first woman to receive a tenure-track position in the department. She is also the older sister of U.S. activist, consumer advocate, and frequent third-party candidate Ralph Nader, and the younger sister of community advocate Shafeek Nader and social scientist Claire Nader.

Early life and education

Nader is a native of Winsted, Connecticut. Her father Nathra owned a restaurant/store in Connecticut, which served as a place for many political discussions. Her mother, Rose, was a schoolteacher who had a strong interest in justice and would express her views in letters to the press. Her late brother, Shafeek; her older sister, Claire and her younger brother, Ralph have all had careers working for the public good. Gamal Nkrumah (2005) profiled Dr. Nader in the weekly online news out of Egypt and commented on her loyalties to her father who emigrated from Lebanon for political reasons, “Nader is very much her father's daughter. And it was her elder brother who first suggested she read anthropology at university."{{cite journal| journal = Web Ezine| year = 2005| pages = 1–5| author = Gamal Nkrumah| title = Speaking Out in Al-Ahram Weekly| url = http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/726/profile.htm| url-status = dead| archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20071011182529/http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/726/profile.htm| archivedate = 2007-10-11}}

Nader received a B.A. in Latin American Studies from Wells College in Aurora, New York in 1952. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard University (Radcliffe College) in 1961 under the mentorship of Clyde Kluckhohn. Her education included fieldwork in a Zapotec village in Oaxaca, Mexico, and later in South Lebanon.

Research

Nader's areas of interest include comparative ethnography of law and dispute resolution, conflict, comparative family organization, anthropology of professional mindsets and ethnology of the Middle East, Mexico, Latin America and the United States.

She has been involved in conferences on directing the study of law to be more integral to society, rather than insulated and isolated from other institutions as it often is now. Nader edited and published essays from these conferences and authored several books on the anthropology of law, establishing herself as one of the most influential figures in the development of the field. She has been a visiting professor at the Yale, Stanford, and Harvard Law Schools. In the 1960s she taught a joint course at the Boalt School of Law.

Some of Nader's work focuses on conflict resolution in the Zapotec village she studies. Nader notes that people in the village confront each other face to face on a personal scale. Village judicial figures strive to find solutions that are balanced, rather than placing all of the blame on one party. Nader believes this reflects their society, economic system, hierarchal structure and other institutions or variables. In contrast, she finds that in the United States, conflict often escalates to polarized blame and violence. The group of people a person may need to confront may be large, impersonal and much more powerful than themselves. She concludes that the kinds of cases people bring to court reflect areas of stress in the social structure of a community.

=Harmony ideology=

Nader has written extensively about "harmony ideology," an ideology centered around the belief that conflict is necessarily bad or dysfunctional and that a healthy society is one that achieves harmony between people and minimizes conflict and confrontation. She has argued in her book Harmony Ideology that harmony ideology has been spread amongst colonized peoples around the world by missionaries prior to, and facilitating, their military colonization. According to her, implementation of this ideology by the Zapotec (a group of indigenous Mexican peoples) acts as a useful counterexample to the trend. She claims the Zapotec used harmony ideology in a "counter-hegemonic" way by maintaining the appearance of "harmony" while engaging in a great deal of litigation behind the scenes. In this way, according to Nader, the Zapotec prevented the Mexican government from interfering with their relative autonomy.

Nader also argues that harmony ideology has been an important basis for a number of unsubstantiated legal ideas in the United States developed since the 1960s, including potential "litigation explosions" and Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) as a method for moving "garbage cases" from the courtroom into an arena that emphasizes harmony, compromise and the language of therapy over talk of injustice. Many of the then-newly appearing civil rights cases of the 1960s may have been considered such "garbage cases" at the time.

While Nader's career began with a strong interest in law and forms of social control, over time she became more interested in questions of cultural control and "controlling processes" (also the title of a popular undergraduate course she taught from 1984 until 2010), a concept described in her 1997 article, "Controlling processes: Tracing the dynamic components of power."{{cite journal|author=Laura Nader|title=Controlling Processes - Tracing the Dynamic Components of Power|date=1997|journal=Current Anthropology|volume=38 |issue=5|pages=711–737|url=http://repositories.cdlib.org/postprints/3107}} Nader has coined the term "trustanoia" to describe the antonym of paranoia and the state of Americans' feeling of trust of others. She contends that people in the United States trust that there is always someone there to take care of them, and that everyone (including legislators and politicians) acts in their interest.

= Studying up =

One of Nader's best-known contributions was her highly controversial 1969 article, "Up the anthropologist--Perspectives gained from studying up," which was "one of the first calls to anthropologists to think more about the 'study of the colonizers rather than the colonized, the culture of power rather than the culture of the powerless, the culture of affluence rather than the culture of poverty.'"{{cite web|url=http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/ANTH/centennial/imprint/nader_anthropologist.html#|title=Anthropology: Berkeley's Imprint - Laura Nader - "Up the Anthropologist: Perspectives Gained from Studying Up"|publisher=Lib.berkeley.edu|accessdate=13 December 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180118124739/http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/ANTH/centennial/imprint/nader_anthropologist.html|archive-date=18 January 2018|url-status=dead}} This article influenced many anthropologists to begin "studying up," though many more misinterpreted Nader without studying "down" and "sideways." Nader's works for the field of anthropology and discipline have led her to be described as "the embodied moral conscience of post-Boasian American anthropology."David H. Price (2004), Threatening Anthropology. p. xv. Durham: Duke University Press

Awards

Morgan Spanish Prize, Wells College[http://sun3.lib.uci.edu/racyberlib/Quest/interview-laura_nader.html] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060911234048/http://sun3.lib.uci.edu/racyberlib/Quest/interview-laura_nader.html|date=September 11, 2006}}
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[http://www.lawandsociety.org/prizes/kalven_prize.htm] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050712081525/http://www.lawandsociety.org/prizes/kalven_prize.htm|date=July 12, 2005}}
American Anthropological Association, Distinguished Lecture Award (2000), American Anthropological Association [https://web.archive.org/web/20070607091408/http://aaanet.org/committees/awards/awards.htm]
CoGEA (Committee on Gender Equity in Anthropology) Award (aka "The Squeaky Wheel Award") (2010){{cite web|url=http://www.aaanet.org/about/Prizes-Awards/COSWA-Award.cfm|title=CoGEA Award|publisher=Aaanet.org|accessdate=13 December 2014|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20141213215001/http://www.aaanet.org/about/Prizes-Awards/COSWA-Award.cfm|archivedate=13 December 2014}}

Publications

Nader is the author or coauthor of over 280 published books and articles, including:

{{cite book | title = Talea and Juquila; a comparison of Zapotec social organization | author = Laura Nader | publisher = University of California Press | year = 1964 | oclc = 2958459 }}
{{cite book | title = The ethnography of law | author = Laura Nader | location = Menasha, Wisconsin | publisher = American Anthropological Association | year = 1965 | oclc = 3075225 }}
{{cite book | title = Law in culture and society | author = Laura Nader |author2=Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research |author2-link=Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research | location = Chicago | publisher = Aldine Publishing Company | year = 1969 | oclc = 59266 }}
{{cite book | title = Cultural illness and health; essays in human adaptation | author = Laura Nader |author2=Thomas Maretzki | location = Washington | publisher = American Anthropological Association | year = 1973 | oclc = 741222 }}
{{cite book | title = The Kroeber Islanders; a handbook of anthropology at Berkeley | author = Laura Nader |author2=University of California |author3=Berkeley. Dept. of Anthropology | publisher = University of California, Dept. of Anthropology | year = 1976 | oclc = 29557308 }}
{{cite book | title = The Disputing process : law in ten societies | author = Laura Nader | author2 = Harry F Todd | location = New York | publisher = Columbia University Press | year = 1978 | isbn = 0-231-04536-0 | url-access = registration | url = https://archive.org/details/disputingprocess0000unse_5 }}
{{cite book | title = Energy Choices in a Democratic Society | author = Laura Nader | publisher = National Academy of Sciences |date=July 1980 | isbn = 0-309-03045-5 }}
{{cite book | title = No Access to Law: Alternatives to the American Judicial System | url = https://archive.org/details/noaccesstolawalt00nade | url-access = registration | author = Laura Nader | publisher = Academic Press |date=August 1981 | isbn = 0-12-513562-9 }}
{{cite book | title = Harmony ideology : justice and control in a Zapotec mountain village | author = Laura Nader | publisher = Stanford University Press | year = 1990 | isbn = 0-8047-1809-1 }}
{{cite book | title = Essays on controlling processes | author = Laura Nader | location = Berkeley, CA | publisher = Kroeber Anthropological Society | year = 1994 | oclc = 31980852 }}. Reprinted in 1996 {{OCLC|36139409}}, 2002 {{OCLC|50922612}} and 2005 {{OCLC|68178289}}.
{{cite book | title = Naked science : anthropological inquiry into boundaries, power, and knowledge | author = Laura Nader| location = New York | publisher = Routledge | year = 1996 | isbn = 0-415-91464-7 }}
{{cite book | title = Law in culture and society | author = Laura Nader | publisher = University of California Press | year = 1997 | isbn = 0-520-20833-1 }}
{{cite book | title = The life of the law : anthropological projects | author = Laura Nader | publisher = University of California Press | year = 2002 | isbn = 0-520-22988-6 }} Reprinted in 2005 {{ISBN|0-520-23163-5}}.
{{cite book | title = Plunder: When the Rule of Law is Illegal | author = Ugo Mattei | author2 = Laura Nader | publisher = Blackwell Publishers | year = 2008 | isbn = 978-1-4051-7894-5 }} Printed in 2008 {{ISBN|978-1-4051-7894-5}}.
{{cite book| title = The Energy Reader | author = Laura Nader | publisher = Wiley-Blackwell Publishers | year = 2010 | isbn = 978-1405199841}}
Laura Nader (2010). "Side by Side: The Other Is Not Mute" in Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation. Adel Iskandar and Hakem Al Rustom, editors. University of California Press.
{{cite book | title = Culture and Dignity: Dialogues Between the Middle East and the West | author = Laura Nader | publisher = Wiley-Blackwell Publishers | year = 2012 | isbn = 978-1118319017}}
{{cite book | title = What the Rest Think of the West: Since 600AD | author = Laura Nader | publisher = University of California Press | year = 2015 | isbn = 978-0520285781}}
{{cite book | title = Contrarian Anthropology: The Unwritten Rules of Academia | author = Laura Nader | publisher = Berghahn Books | year = 2018 | isbn = 978-1785337086}}

Films

Laura Nader (1966) To Make the Balance 33 min.
Laura Nader (1980) Little Injustices- Laura Nader Looks at the Law 60 min.
Laura Nader (2011) Losing Knowledge: Fifty Years of Change 40 min.

References

External links

[http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/narrators/nader_laura.html Laura Nader oral history interview.]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20060215215157/http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/anth/nader.html Laura Nader's biosketch at UC-Berkeley]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20110524030223/http://members.fortunecity.com/lohan/interview-laura_nader.html The Drift to War; Laura Nader, Interviewed by John M. Whiteley]
[http://www.alumni.berkeley.edu/Alumni/Cal_Monthly/November_2000/Q-A_Conversation_with_Laura_Nader.asp Q and A: A Conversation with Laura Nader]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20071011182529/http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/726/profile.htm Laura Nader: Speaking out. When silence is part of the problem (Al-Ahram Weekly)]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20071013202801/http://aaanet.org/press/an/0907/nader.html Laura Nader: What's Good About Conflict? (Anthropology News)]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20090326011930/http://www.american.edu/cas/anthro/public/ Laura Nader keynote address at American University Fifth Annual Public Anthropology Conference]

Category:American cultural anthropologists

Category:American women anthropologists

Category:American ethnographers

Category:20th-century American non-fiction writers

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Category:20th-century American women writers

Category:21st-century American women writers

Category:American women non-fiction writers

Category:Arab-American writers

Category:University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty

Category:Radcliffe College alumni

Category:Wells College alumni