17 Facts About Laura Nader

Laura Nader has been a Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley since 1960.

Laura Nader was the first woman to receive a tenure-track position in the department.

Laura Nader is the older sister of US activist, consumer advocate, and frequent third-party candidate Ralph Nader, and the younger sister of community advocate Shafeek Nader and social scientist Claire Nader.

Laura Nader's mother, Rose, was a schoolteacher who had a strong interest in justice and would express her views in letters to the press.

Laura Nader's older deceased brother, Shafeek; her older sister, Claire and her younger brother, Ralph have all served in public interest careers.

Laura Nader's education included fieldwork in a Zapotec village in Oaxaca, Mexico, and later in South Lebanon.

Laura Nader 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.

Laura 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.

Laura Nader has been a visiting professor at the Yale, Stanford, and Harvard Law Schools.

Some of Laura Nader's work focuses on conflict resolution in the Zapotec village she studies.

Laura Nader believes this reflects their society, economic system, hierarchal structure and other institutions or variables.

Laura Nader concludes that the kinds of cases people bring to court reflect areas of stress in the social structure of a community.

Laura 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.

Laura Nader 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.

Laura Nader 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 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.

Laura Nader contends that people in the United States trust that there is always someone there to take care of them, and that everyone acts in their interest.

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