Equity at the Peril of Normativity: A Feminist Anthropological Take on Race, Marriage and Justice

Anthropologists take up many of the same issues as the Supreme Court–race, family and kinship, and historical inequities.  The difference is we don’t step into our controversies so quickly.  Our fieldwork process, which often lasts years, allows us critical time to mull things over and consider crucial nuances in the lives of those impacted by policy and legal decisions. Anthropology offers perspectives that interrogate the ideal in comparison to practice, and at its best makes a distinction between the manifestation of “justice” and the deep structures of social injustice. [The co-author, Christa Craven, is a New College alum.]