Carol Laderman
Encyclopedia
Carol Laderman was a groundbreaking medical anthropologist
, specializing in the study of pregnancy
and childbirth
practices, shamanism
, and Southeast Asia
n cultures, particularly Malay
s in rural Terengganu
, Malaysia. She was also a critically acclaimed writer and a longtime professor and lecturer who had just been reelevated to Chairmanship of the Department of Anthropology at City College
at the time of her death.
section of Brooklyn
with her father, Philip Ciavati (ne Cohen), mother, Sylvia (nee Sugarman) and her older sister, Irma Cavat, who is today a painter and Professor Emerita of Art at UC Santa Barbara. She was musically talented, and studied piano with Irma Wolpe and music theory
and counterpoint
with Stefan Wolpe
. A fellow student of Stefan Wolpe, the composer Ezra Laderman
, had a younger brother named Gabriel
, who would eventually become Carol's husband. Shortly after she got married at the age of 20, Gabriel was drafted into the US Army, and Carol interrupted her education as a music major at Brooklyn College
to join her husband near Fort Leonard Wood
after he had completed basic training
.
Subsequently, Carol helped support Gabriel and her son, Raphael (b. 1958) by working as a legal secretary, social secretary and translator.
- like Brooklyn, part of the CUNY system - and reactivated her matriculation. She initially maintained her status as a music major, but when she took an anthropology course with Rena Gropper to fulfill a distributional requirement, she was so captivated that she changed her major. While she was still an undergraduate at Hunter, she did research under the auspices of Mt. Sinai Hospital
on the attitudes young Latina mothers in Spanish Harlem
and the South Bronx
had toward the American health care system they were exposed to, and was thereby introduced to the humoral system as a fundamental aspect of a living belief system, rather than as just an ancient theory of Galen and others. This experience would prove to be important to her future research in Malaysia. She explained the practical applications of the humoral system as applied to foods in a New York Times article, for which she was interviewed:
"Scotch on the rocks[...]would be considered very hot, while squash, even taken boiling from the stove, would be cold."
Ms. Laderman graduated from Hunter College with honors in 1972 and was shortly thereafter awarded a Danforth Foundation
fellowship, which enabled her to do graduate work at Columbia University
. While she was a masters-level student at Columbia, she wrote "Malaria and progress: Some historical and ecological considerations" - which is still a much-cited article today.
, Terengganu
, on the East Coast of the Malay Peninsula. She was apprenticed to a locally-famous bomoh
and a traditional village midwife. The Doctoral dissertation that resulted from her research, "Conceptions and Preconceptions: Childbirth and Nutrition in Rural Malaysia" - for which she received a Ph.D. with distinction - and the subsequent book, "Wives and Midwives: Childbirth and Nutrition in Rural Malaysia, helped correct many assumptions previously made by anthropologists and other writers about Malay culture. For example, through rigorous dietary analysis and blood testing, she was able to demonstrate that traditional dietary restrictions practiced by some Malay women during pregnancy and for 40 days after childbirth were not causing malnutrition, as had previously been claimed.
It is difficult to overstate the degree to which her methodical work upended previous conventional wisdom about Malay culture among the anthropological community. To take just one example, on p. 185 of "Wives and Midwives," Laderman states that previous authorities "agree[d]...that fluids are restricted during the postpartum period," yet of 131 women she questioned about nursing their babies, 103 had nursed without bottle supplements for at least one year. She explains that previous researchers had erred by misunderstanding a prohibition on drinking cold water (primarily due to humoral considerations of cold water being possibly dangerously humorally "cooling" to the baby) as constituting a limitation on overall fluid intake, and also by overrelying on "sayur" as "the [generic] word for vegetables in standard Malay," as opposed to the specific local meaning of "vegetables [cooked] with coconut cream, chilis, and fish." Asking Malays from Terengganu and Kelantan
how much "sayur" they eat would have produced misleading answers, if the questioner was trying to discover how often they ate vegetables in any form.
A subsequent book, "Taming the Wind of Desire: Psychology, Medicine and Aesthetics in Malay Shamanistic Performance," includes the first complete - and copiously annotated - translations of entire Main Peteri healing ceremonies, and constitutes the first instance of anthropological research which demonstrates the existence of a non-Western system of nonprojective psychotherapy
Within the book are explanations of the traditional Malay archetypes of personality called "angin" (="winds"), which Laderman analogizes to Jungian archetypes
. In a monograph of the Federation Museums Journal of Malaysia, the original texts, in dialect/ritual Malay, were published.
Laderman returned to Malaysia to do further research in 1982 and 2003.
, Hunter College
, and Brooklyn College
, but most of all, Fordham University
and City College
. Among her many honors and awards was a stint as a Resident Scholar of the Rockefeller Foundation
's center in Bellagio
, Italy
and a Guggenheim Fellowship
.
Medical anthropology
Medical anthropology is an interdisciplinary field which studies "human health and disease, health care systems, and biocultural adaptation". It views humans from multidimensional and ecological perspectives...
, specializing in the study of pregnancy
Pregnancy
Pregnancy refers to the fertilization and development of one or more offspring, known as a fetus or embryo, in a woman's uterus. In a pregnancy, there can be multiple gestations, as in the case of twins or triplets...
and childbirth
Childbirth
Childbirth is the culmination of a human pregnancy or gestation period with the birth of one or more newborn infants from a woman's uterus...
practices, shamanism
Shamanism
Shamanism is an anthropological term referencing a range of beliefs and practices regarding communication with the spiritual world. To quote Eliade: "A first definition of this complex phenomenon, and perhaps the least hazardous, will be: shamanism = technique of ecstasy." Shamanism encompasses the...
, and Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia, South-East Asia, South East Asia or Southeastern Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India, west of New Guinea and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic...
n cultures, particularly Malay
Malaysian Malay
In Malaysia, the Malay population is defined by Article 160 of the Malaysian Constitution as someone born to a Malaysian citizen who professes to be a Muslim, habitually speaks the Malay language, adheres to Malay customs and is domiciled in Malaysia or Singapore...
s in rural Terengganu
Terengganu
Terengganu is a sultanate and constitutive state of federal Malaysia. The state is also known by its Arabic honorific, Darul Iman...
, Malaysia. She was also a critically acclaimed writer and a longtime professor and lecturer who had just been reelevated to Chairmanship of the Department of Anthropology at City College
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
at the time of her death.
Birth, early family life and education
Carol was born and grew up in the Crown HeightsCrown Heights, Brooklyn
Crown Heights is a neighborhood in the central portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The main thoroughfare through this neighborhood is Eastern Parkway, a tree-lined boulevard designed by Frederick Law Olmsted extending two miles east-west.Originally, the area was known as Crow Hill....
section of Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
with her father, Philip Ciavati (ne Cohen), mother, Sylvia (nee Sugarman) and her older sister, Irma Cavat, who is today a painter and Professor Emerita of Art at UC Santa Barbara. She was musically talented, and studied piano with Irma Wolpe and music theory
Music theory
Music theory is the study of how music works. It examines the language and notation of music. It seeks to identify patterns and structures in composers' techniques across or within genres, styles, or historical periods...
and counterpoint
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
with Stefan Wolpe
Stefan Wolpe
Stefan Wolpe was a German-born composer.-Life:Wolpe was born in Berlin. He attended the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory from the age of fourteen, and the Berlin Hochschule für Musik in 1920-1921. He studied composition under Franz Schreker and was also a pupil of Ferruccio Busoni...
. A fellow student of Stefan Wolpe, the composer Ezra Laderman
Ezra Laderman
Ezra Laderman is an American composer of classical music.-Biography:His parents, Isidor and Leah, both emigrated to the United States from Poland. Though poor, the family had a piano. Ezra writes, "At four, I was improvising at the piano; at seven, I began to compose music, writing it down...
, had a younger brother named Gabriel
Gabriel Laderman
Gabriel Laderman was a New York painter and an early and important exponent of the Figurative revival of the 1950s and '60s.He studied with a number of leading American painters, including Hofmann, de Kooning, and Rothko....
, who would eventually become Carol's husband. Shortly after she got married at the age of 20, Gabriel was drafted into the US Army, and Carol interrupted her education as a music major at Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York, United States.Established in 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, the College had its beginnings as the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College and the City College of New...
to join her husband near Fort Leonard Wood
Fort Leonard Wood (military base)
Fort Leonard Wood is a United States Army installation located in the Missouri Ozarks. The main gate is located on the southern boundary of St. Robert. The post was created in December 1940 and named in honor of General Leonard Wood, former Chief of Staff, in January 1941...
after he had completed basic training
Basic Training
Basic Training may refer to:* Basic Training, a 1971 American documentary directed by Frederick Wiseman* Basic Training , an American sex comedy* Recruit training...
.
Subsequently, Carol helped support Gabriel and her son, Raphael (b. 1958) by working as a legal secretary, social secretary and translator.
Return to college and new focus on anthropology
In 1969, Carol decided to go back to college, called the admissions office at Hunter CollegeHunter College
Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...
- like Brooklyn, part of the CUNY system - and reactivated her matriculation. She initially maintained her status as a music major, but when she took an anthropology course with Rena Gropper to fulfill a distributional requirement, she was so captivated that she changed her major. While she was still an undergraduate at Hunter, she did research under the auspices of Mt. Sinai Hospital
Mount Sinai Hospital, New York
Mount Sinai Hospital, founded in 1852, is one of the oldest and largest teaching hospitals in the United States. In 2011-2012, Mount Sinai Hospital was ranked as one of America's best hospitals by U.S...
on the attitudes young Latina mothers in Spanish Harlem
Spanish Harlem
East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem and El Barrio, is a section of Harlem in the northeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. East Harlem is one of the largest predominantly Latino communities in New York City. It includes the area formerly known as Italian Harlem, in which...
and the South Bronx
South Bronx
The South Bronx is an area of the New York City borough of The Bronx. The neighborhoods of Tremont, University Heights, Highbridge, Morrisania, Soundview, Hunts Point, and Castle Hill are sometimes considered part of the South Bronx....
had toward the American health care system they were exposed to, and was thereby introduced to the humoral system as a fundamental aspect of a living belief system, rather than as just an ancient theory of Galen and others. This experience would prove to be important to her future research in Malaysia. She explained the practical applications of the humoral system as applied to foods in a New York Times article, for which she was interviewed:
"Scotch on the rocks[...]would be considered very hot, while squash, even taken boiling from the stove, would be cold."
Ms. Laderman graduated from Hunter College with honors in 1972 and was shortly thereafter awarded a Danforth Foundation
Danforth Foundation
Danforth Foundation is one of the largest private non-for profit foundations in the St. Louis Metropolitan region. The foundation has 1.5 billion USD in assets as of 2003. Established in 1927 by Ralston Purina founder William H. Danforth and his wife, the Danforth Foundation grants funds...
fellowship, which enabled her to do graduate work at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. While she was a masters-level student at Columbia, she wrote "Malaria and progress: Some historical and ecological considerations" - which is still a much-cited article today.
Malaysia
In 1975, Ms. Laderman, her husband and her younger son, Michael (b. 1965), went to Malaysia, where she would do Doctoral research for the following two years in the coastal village of MerchangMerchang
Merchang is a town located in a sub-district of the same name in Marang District, Terengganu, Malaysia. Fishery and agriculture are the main economic activities in Merchang.- References :...
, Terengganu
Terengganu
Terengganu is a sultanate and constitutive state of federal Malaysia. The state is also known by its Arabic honorific, Darul Iman...
, on the East Coast of the Malay Peninsula. She was apprenticed to a locally-famous bomoh
Bomoh
A bomoh or dukun is a Malay shaman. The bomoh's original role was that of a healer and their expertise was first and foremost an in-depth knowledge of medicinal herbs and tajul muluk or Malay geomancy...
and a traditional village midwife. The Doctoral dissertation that resulted from her research, "Conceptions and Preconceptions: Childbirth and Nutrition in Rural Malaysia" - for which she received a Ph.D. with distinction - and the subsequent book, "Wives and Midwives: Childbirth and Nutrition in Rural Malaysia, helped correct many assumptions previously made by anthropologists and other writers about Malay culture. For example, through rigorous dietary analysis and blood testing, she was able to demonstrate that traditional dietary restrictions practiced by some Malay women during pregnancy and for 40 days after childbirth were not causing malnutrition, as had previously been claimed.
It is difficult to overstate the degree to which her methodical work upended previous conventional wisdom about Malay culture among the anthropological community. To take just one example, on p. 185 of "Wives and Midwives," Laderman states that previous authorities "agree[d]...that fluids are restricted during the postpartum period," yet of 131 women she questioned about nursing their babies, 103 had nursed without bottle supplements for at least one year. She explains that previous researchers had erred by misunderstanding a prohibition on drinking cold water (primarily due to humoral considerations of cold water being possibly dangerously humorally "cooling" to the baby) as constituting a limitation on overall fluid intake, and also by overrelying on "sayur" as "the [generic] word for vegetables in standard Malay," as opposed to the specific local meaning of "vegetables [cooked] with coconut cream, chilis, and fish." Asking Malays from Terengganu and Kelantan
Kelantan
Kelantan is a state of Malaysia. The capital and royal seat is Kota Bharu. The Arabic honorific of the state is Darul Naim, ....
how much "sayur" they eat would have produced misleading answers, if the questioner was trying to discover how often they ate vegetables in any form.
A subsequent book, "Taming the Wind of Desire: Psychology, Medicine and Aesthetics in Malay Shamanistic Performance," includes the first complete - and copiously annotated - translations of entire Main Peteri healing ceremonies, and constitutes the first instance of anthropological research which demonstrates the existence of a non-Western system of nonprojective psychotherapy
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is a general term referring to any form of therapeutic interaction or treatment contracted between a trained professional and a client or patient; family, couple or group...
Within the book are explanations of the traditional Malay archetypes of personality called "angin" (="winds"), which Laderman analogizes to Jungian archetypes
Jungian archetypes
Carl Jung created the archetypes which “are ancient or archaic images that derive from the collective unconscious” Also known as innate universal psychic dispositions that form the substrate from which the basic symbols or representations of unconscious experience emerge...
. In a monograph of the Federation Museums Journal of Malaysia, the original texts, in dialect/ritual Malay, were published.
Laderman returned to Malaysia to do further research in 1982 and 2003.
Academic career
Dr. Laderman had a long career as a professor, lecturer, editor, and reviewer, as well as a writer. Among the institutions she was associated with were Yale UniversityYale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, Hunter College
Hunter College
Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...
, and Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York, United States.Established in 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, the College had its beginnings as the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College and the City College of New...
, but most of all, Fordham University
Fordham University
Fordham University is a private, nonprofit, coeducational research university in the United States, with three campuses in and around New York City. It was founded by the Roman Catholic Diocese of New York in 1841 as St...
and City College
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
. Among her many honors and awards was a stint as a Resident Scholar of the Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
's center in Bellagio
Bellagio
Bellagio is a comune in the Province of Como in the Italian region Lombardy, located on Lake Como. It has long been famous for its setting at the intersection of the three branches of the Y-shaped lake, which is also known as Lario....
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
and a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
.