Linda L. Layne

Linda Louise Layne (born Burbank, California, 1955) is an American cultural anthropologist, researcher, and author known for her work on reproductive culture, motherhood, pregnancy loss, single motherhood, morality, and feminist theory. She has held academic positions in the United States and the United Kingdom, and her scholarship spans ethnography, family studies, and gender and moral anthropology. Layne’s work has been widely discussed in academic and public contexts, and she is the author or editor of numerous books and journal articles.

In 2011 she became a visiting fellow at the University of Cambridge Centre for Family Research and from 2017-2022, a visiting member of the Reproductive Sociology Research Group (ReproSoc).

Education and academic career Layne earned a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology and political science from the University of Southern California, followed by an M.Phil. in social anthropology from University of Cambridge and an M.A. and Ph.D. in cultural anthropology and Near Eastern studies from Princeton University. Her doctoral dissertation examined the production and reproduction of tribal identities in Jordan, and resulted in the book Home and Homeland: Dialogics of Tribal and National Identities in Jordan which explored tribal and national identities in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

From 1993 to 2014, Layne taught at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where she held The Alma and H. Erwin Hale ’30 Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences chair and served as a professor of anthropology and science and technology studies.

Research and scholarly works Layne’s research spans several diverse subjects that are nonetheless instead of interconnected methodologically. Her first field research in Algiers (1977) was funded by an NEH Youthgrant. That project produced a meticulous analysis of one individual, a slum dwelling mother who lived alone with her children and made do with a dense network of informal exchanges while her husband was away working in France. It was in Algiers that Layne became acquainted with the French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu.

A student of Bourdieu’s, the Algerian sociologist Fanny Colona supervised Layne’s work in Algiers. Like Bourdieu, Layne adopted a “hyper-empiricist” approach. As he did in his study of the Kabyle house, Layne documented the placement of bodies and furniture in Jordan in “settled Bedouin” tents and houses, and in the home of a middle class American single mother of three. Like Bourdieu in his book Distinction, Layne documented in minute detail the acquisition and deaccessioning of stuff that entered the single mother by choice’s home.

Awards Layne has received numerous awards in recognition of her scholarship, teaching, and public engagement. She was honored with the Gracie “Outstanding Talk Show” award from the Foundation of American Women in Radio and Television in 2006, 2007, and 2008 for her programs addressing pregnancy loss, miscarriage, and reproductive justice, including conversations with Lynn Paltrow and Heather Swain. , which awarded her the Best Current Edited Collection Prize in 2005 for Consuming Motherhood. New York: Routledge 1994 Home and Homeland: The Dialogics of Tribal and National Identities in Jordan, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Edited volumes and special issues 2013 Parenting in Global Perspective: Negotiating Ideologies of Kinship, Self and Politics, Charlotte Faircloth, Diane Hoffman and Linda Layne eds. London: Routledge 2012 Understanding Reproductive Loss, Sarah Earle, Carol Komaromy, and Linda Layne, eds. Ashgate Press 2010 Feminist Technology, Layne, Vostral and Boyer eds. University of Illinois Press 2004 Consuming Motherhood, Taylor, Layne and Wozniak eds. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. (featured in Oct 2004 Chronicle for Higher Education). 1999 Transformative Motherhood: On Giving and Getting in a Consumer Culture, ed. Layne. New York: New York University Press. 1998 Anthropological Approaches in Science and Technology Studies Special Issue of Science, Technology and Human Values winter, vol. 23, number 1

Articles in refereed journals 2000 "The Cultural Fix": An Anthropological Contribution to Science and Technology Studies, Science, Technology, and Human Values 1996 "How's the baby doing?": Struggling with narratives of progress in a neonatal intensive care unit, PubMed