Mindie Lazarus-Black is an anthropologist and her book, Everyday Harm: Domestic Violence, Court Rites, and Cultures of Reconciliation, which is set in Trinidad and Tobago, investigates the passage and implementation of domestic violence law. Lazarus-Black seeks to capture what the law can and cannot accomplish. She seeks to answer four questions with her study: why and when do lawmakers write new legislation to protect victims of domestic violence? Why does so little result in legislation? What can domestic violence law mean for women’s empowerment, gender equity and protection? And how do cultural norms and practices intercept the law so that violent actions become understandable to a judge?

When Everyday Harm was released in 2007, it built upon recent theoretical literature in anthropology and cross-cultural research on law and domestic violence. She analyzes law as an area for oppression, examining ways in which it engenders acts of domination while acknowledging that law offers a place for protest and protection. Her study is the first in-depth ethnographic investigation of domestic violence law in the English-speaking Caribbean.

Lazarus-Black’s study extends scholars' understanding of symbolic and pragmatic roles of law in post-colonial nations as new kinship and gender relationships are legislated. Reconceptualizing relationships between agency, structure, and time in court with obvious implications for how bureaucracies function more generally, is something Lazarus-Black does with her work. She develops a ‘court rites’ model with which she looks at two specific things: how intimidation, objectification, and humiliation is exercised by legal professionals, and how victims' voices are silenced and euphemisms are used to cover up abuse.

Everyday Harm was an interesting analysis into criminal law in the Caribbean; I was particularly fascinated with Trinidad and Tobago’s cultural of reconciliation, and how that played into domestic abuse.