Greenhouse was born on January 4, 1950, in
New Haven, Connecticut, H. Robert and Dorothy E. Greenhouse. In 1967, her first year at
Radcliffe College, she enrolled in an anthropology of law seminar taught by legal anthropologist
Klaus-Friedrich Koch, who would become her undergraduate and graduate adviser alongside
Mesoamerican anthropologist
Evon Z. Vogt. Her early academic interest was shaped by the rights-based social movements of the era and by questions about law, peace, and conflict she sought to understand through anthropology. As an undergraduate, she conducted fieldwork among
Indigenous Maya in
Zinacantan, in the highlands of
Chiapas,
Mexico, as a member of the Harvard Chiapas Project. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from Radcliffe College in 1971. Greenhouse remained at Harvard for her Ph.D. in Anthropology, which she received in 1976. Her earlier fieldwork on sacred and secular dispute resolution in Zinacantan led her to pursue similar questions in her doctoral research, which focused on a small
Baptist community in the
southern United States. Working with Koch and Vogt, she completed her dissertation and received here Ph.D. in 1976; her doctoral minor was in law. == Career ==