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Early life Leacock was born on July 2, 1922, in New Jersey.[6] Her mother, Lily, was a mathematician and her father was the literary critic, philosopher, and writer Kenneth Burke. Leacock did her undergraduate work at Barnard College[7] and Radcliffe College. She completed her graduate training at Columbia University. In 1941, she married filmmaker Richard Leacock with whom she had four children. The couple divorced in 1962 and in 1966 Leacock married civil rights and union activist James Haughton.[8]

Leacock finished her undergraduate career in Barnard College and finished MA courses in Columbia University. With the doctoral degree of Anthropology, the career started in a way which was more difficult than her expectations. During the time travelling to Paris, Leacock had started her research on the fur trade among Montagnais-Naskapi people. Her doctoral work, advised by William Duncan Strong and Gene Weltfish, comprised ethnohistorical research and fieldwork in Labrador, Canada, among the Montagnais-Naskapi people. Her interviews and research challenged the normative view, proposed by ethnographers Frank Speck and Loren Eisley, that the Montagnais-Naskapi had traditionally observed private land tenure practices. Leacock demonstrated instead that attitudes and practices regarding land had been transformed by colonial contact and the fur trade.[3]

Career

She worked at Bank Street College of Education as a senior research associate, from 1958 to 1965,[7] and at Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in the social sciences department, from 1963 to 1972.[7] She struggled to get a full-time job during the 1950s due to her outspoken political views.[9] She was known to sympathize with the communist party and had many Marxist views strewn throughout her works. She taught as an adjunct for decades before being appointed, in 1972, as a professor and chair of anthropology[7] at City College (CCNY) and graduate faculty of City University of New York Graduate Center.[7] Although highly qualified, Leacock credited her CCNY appointment to the rise of the women's movement and social pressure felt by City College to diversify its faculty.[10] Her appointment coincided with the publication of her celebrated introduction to Friedrich Engels' The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State. In that introduction, she cited contemporary research to further explicate Engels' theory that "the historic defeat of the female sex" and subjugation of women began with the stratification of society, the widespread practice of private property, and the emergence of a state.[11] She used Engels' work almost as a starting point for her own argument that understanding women's oppression throughout history was the key to understanding up and coming societies along with capitalism. Leacock believed that the oppression of women was not an eternal part of all societies, nor was it rooted in biology. This is especially clear in the fieldwork she does in Labrador, Canada, with the Montaganais-Nakapi people.

One of Leacock's most fruitful contributions to the field of anthropology was her essay entitled "Interpreting the Origins of Gender Inequality: Conceptual and Historical Problems" (1983), in which she discussed gender inequalities. Leacock's theories mainly concentrated on the intersectionality of race, class, gender, sexuality, and religion. And she refuted the biological determinism as it relates to race, gender, and class. Leacock's work could be reflected in five areas: women's status in egalitarian society, race and gender in schools, culture of poverty studies, women's work in development, and the studies of race, class, and gender in Samoa. Arguing the roles of women in the hierarchical society, she claimed that some features of women become exploitable under the patriarchy system. Leacock interpreted the structure of marriage as the structure of exchange and the division of labor. The exploitation of women's labor within the household is the same. Leacock published her articles on Marxist feminism in the later years of her career and it has been the most important contribution she has made.

Leacock's career involved four major regions: North America, Europe, Africa, and the Pacific. In these areas she studied various topics including the anthropology of education, women cross culturally, foraging societies, etc.[12]

Fieldwork

After receiving her graduate degree Leacock traveled to Europe with her first husband while he was shooting films on human geography. It's during this time in Paris that she began researching the social changes in the fur trade amount the Montagnais-Naskapi people. In 1951 Leacock received a grant to conduct fieldwork in Labrador. During this time she brought her 1 year old son with her to Labrador. She used this fieldwork to challenge the idea that private property is universal. It isn't until 1971 that she does her next big fieldwork assignment in Zambia. During this time Zambia hadn't let many anthropologists into the country because of perceived colonist attitudes. This particular fieldwork aided Leacock in her research of the decolonization efforts in in primary school education. 