Laura Nader
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Laura Nader (born 1930) has been a Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley since 1960.[1] She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Radcliffe College in 1961.[1] Her education included fieldwork in a Zapotec village in Oaxaca, Mexico, which nurtured her interest in law as it exists in various societies, an interest that began with her family, which stressed the importance of law and justice. Ralph Nader, consumer activist, is Laura Nader's younger brother.
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[edit] Research
Nader’s areas of interest include comparative ethnography of law and dispute resolution, conflict, comparative family organization, the anthropology of professional mindsets and ethnology of the Middle East, Mexico, Latin America and the contemporary United States. She was involved in conferences in the 1960's, determining the direction the study of law in society as a part of society and not insulated and isolated from other human institutions, should take as it developed. Nader edited and published essays from these conferences as well as authoring several books on the anthropology of law, establishing herself as an influential figure in the development of the field.
Some of her work focuses on conflict resolution in the Zapotec village she studied. Nader notes that people confront each other face to face on a personal scale. Judges strive to find solutions that are balanced rather than placing one hundred percent of the blame on one party. Nader believes this reflects the society, their economic system, hierarchal structure and any other institution or variable. 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 and 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.
However, Nader has written extensively about "harmony ideology," the ideology centered around the belief that the existence of conflict is necessarily a bad or dysfunctional thing 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 and that the Zapotec used it in a "counter-hegemonic" way by maintaining the appearance of harmony (while in practice engaging in a great deal of litigation) in order to prevent the Mexican government from interfering with their relative autonomy. Nader has also argued that harmony ideology has been an important basis for unsubstantiated ideas that have developed in the United States since the 1960s about a "litigation explosion" and for the development of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) as a method for removing so-called "garbage cases" (for instance, the then newly appearing civil rights cases of the 1960s) from the courtroom into an arena that emphasizes harmony, compromise and the language of therapy over talk of injustice.
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.
[edit] Awards
- Morgan Spanish Prize, Wells College [1]
- Wells College Alumnae Award, Wells College
- Radcliffe College Alumnae Award
- Harry Kalven Prize (1995), Law and Society Association [2]
[edit] Publications
[edit] Books
- Laura Nader; Duane Metzger (1962). Conflict resolution in two Mexican communities. S.l. : s.n.. OCLC 10637168.
- Laura Nader (1964). The ethnography of law. Stanford, Calif.: Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences. OCLC 8869632.
- Laura Nader (1964). Talea and Juquila; a comparison of Zapotec social organization. University of California Press. OCLC 2958459.
- Laura Nader (1965). The ethnography of law. Menasha, Wisconsin: American Anthropological Association. OCLC 3075225.
- Laura Nader; Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (1969). Law in culture and society. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company. OCLC 59266.
- Laura Nader; Thomas Maretzki; Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford, Calif.) (1973). Cultural illness and health; essays in human adaptation. Washington: American Anthropological Association. OCLC 741222.
- Laura Nader; University of California, Berkeley. Dept. of Anthropology (1976). The Kroeber Islanders ; a handbook of anthropology at Berkeley. University of California, Dept. of Anthropology. OCLC 29557308.
- Laura Nader (1977). The problem of order in a faceless society. s.l. : s.n.. OCLC 4865456.
- Laura Nader; Harry F Todd (1978). The Disputing process : law in ten societies. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0231045360.
- Laura Nader (Jul 1980). Energy Choices in a Democratic Society. National Academy of Sciences. ISBN 0309030455.
- Laura Nader (Aug 1981). No Access to Law: Alternatives to the American Judicial System. Academic Press. ISBN 0125135629.
- Gary B Melton; Laura Nader (1986). The law as a behavioral instrument. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0803231008.
- Laura Nader (1990). Harmony ideology : justice and control in a Zapotec mountain village. Stanford University Press. ISBN 0804718091.
- Laura Nader (1992). The Cheyenne way : conflict and case law in primitive jurisprudence : K.N. LLewellyn and E. Adamson Hoebel : notes from the editors. Delran, New Jersey: The Legal Classics Library. OCLC 28897832 .
- Laura Nader (1994). Essays on controlling processes. Berkeley, CA: Kroeber Anthropological Society. OCLC 31980852. . Reprinted in 1996 OCLC 36139409, 2002 OCLC 50922612 and 2005 OCLC 68178289.
- Laura Nader (1996). Naked science : anthropological inquiry into boundaries, power, and knowledge. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415914647.
- Laura Nader (1997). Law in culture and society. University of California Press. ISBN 0520208331.
- Laura Nader (2002). The life of the law : anthropological projects. University of California Press. ISBN 0520229886. Reprinted in 2005 ISBN 0520231635.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Laura Nader (2004). "The Link Between Justice and International Law". Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 10 (3): pp 297-299. DOI:10.1207/s15327949pac1003_6. ISSN 1532-7949.
