Laura Nader

Laura Näder

Description

Laura Nader documents decades of letters written, received, and archived by esteemed author and anthropologist Laura Nader. She revisits her correspondence with academic colleagues, lawyers, politicians, military officers, and many others, all with unique and insightful perspectives on a variety of social and political issues. She uses personal and professional correspondence as a way of examining complex issues and dialogues that might not be available by other means. By compiling these letters, Nader allows us to take an intimate look at how she interacts with people across multiple fields, disciplines, and outlooks.Arranged chronologically by decade, this book follows Nader from her early career and efforts to change patriarchal policies at UC, Berkeley, to her efforts to fight against climate change and minimize environmental degradation. The letters act as snapshots, giving us glimpses of the lives and issues that dominated culture at the time of their writing. Among the many issues that the correspondence in Laura Nader explores are how a man on death row sees things, how scientists are concerned about and approach their subject matter, and how an anthropologist ponders issues of American survival. The result is an intriguing and comprehensive history of energy, physics, law, anthropology, feminism and legal anthropology in the United States, as well as a reflection of a lifelong career in legal scholarship.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Diaries

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781501752254
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

LAURA NADER

LAURANADER Letters to and from an Anthropologist

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS

Laura Nader

ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright © 2020 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu.

First published 2020 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America

Every reasonable effort has been made to identify rights holders of the letters and images included in this column; if there are errors or omissions, please contact Cornell University Press so that corrections can be addressed in any subsequent edition.

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Names: Nader, Laura, author. Title: Laura Nader: letters to and from an anthropologist / Laura Nader. Description: Ithaca [New York] : Cornell University Press, 2020. | Includes  bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020024241 (print) | LCCN 2020024242 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501752247 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501752254 (pdf) |  ISBN 9781501752261 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Nader, Laura—Correspondence. | Anthropology—Philosophy. | Anthropologists—United States. | Anthropology—History—20th century. | Anthropology—History—21st century. | LCGFT: Personal correspondence. Classification: LCC GN33. N334 2020 (print) | LCC GN33 (ebook) |  DDC 301.01—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024241 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024242

Cover photo: Photograph of Laura Nader from author’s personal collection.

To Nadia, Tarek, Rania, and the memory of Samya Rose Stumo

Contents

Preface

Introduction 1. Getting Started in the Sixties 2. Reinventing Anthropology in the Seventies 3. Uncovering Academic Mindsets in the Eighties 4. The Ivory Tower Is No More in the Nineties 5. A TwentyFirstCentury World Epilogue

Acknowledgments Appendix: Letters in Order of Appearance Notes Bibliography Index

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1 7 41 107 179 255 347

351 353 369 371 373

Preface

Thomas Jefferson wrote about half a dozen letters a day, communicating widely. That was two hundred years ago, yet it is still an inspiration today. Now modern options exist as alternatives to letter writing—emails, texting, and more—and there are those who lament that the gentle art of letter writing has been sidelined. There are truths in such laments, but I find myself in an office with thousands of letters written by a wide variety of letter writers. My attention was initially focused on file drawers full of hundreds of letters for the most part alphabetized, simply because I needed to sort overloaded office files. In rereading some of the letters, however, I realized there were stories there. Such correspondence, received over half a century since coming to Berkeley in 1960, was making connections between the academy, sometimes described as an Ivory Tower, and the public. Indeed, the university is now seen as inextricably linked to the world outside the university. In anthropology there are few published books of letters from wellknown academics. Margaret Mead’s letters, both private and personal, were selected for publication after her death by editors who found the materials in the Library of Congress archives—To Cherish the Life of the World: Selected Letters of Margaret 1 Meadcorrespondence between Edward Sapir and A. L. Kroeber covered. The letters written between 1905 and 1925—a total of 363 letters, many handwrit 2 ten, some in pencil saved by Kroeber, thrown out by Sapir. Niko Besnier wrote Literacy, Emotion, and Authorityabout the transformation from a nonliterate to a 3 literate society. In addition, there isThe Story of a Marriage: The Letters of Broni slaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson—letters between Malinowski and his wife, a 4 chronicle of their marriage including letters from the field. Mark Goodale’sLet ters to the Contrary: A Curated History of the UNESCO Human Rights Surveydeals 5 with a complex history of the human rights movement. The letters selected for this volume give a glimpse of academic life mostly unseen by academics and by the public at large. They were sent by academic colleagues (to be expected, perhaps), but they were also sent from lawyers, politi cians, citizens, people in prisons or on death row, Peace Corps workers, members of the military, scientists, and more. Letters not included here were the massive correspondences between my students and me, letters of promotion, of praise, invitations, and thankyous. Personal letters and family letters have also been left out. But what does remain are personal stories of half a century of our country’s

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