Selection Criteria and Eligibility
The ASA Distinguished Scholarly Book Award is presented annually to an ASA member for the best single book published in the two calendar years preceding the year the book is nominated (books with copyright years of 2022 and 2023 are eligible for the 2024 award).
Nomination Procedures
Nominations must include a cover letter with the name of the author, title of book, date of publication, publisher, and a brief statement of no more than 300 words as to why the book should be considered, along with a PDF copy or 10 physical copies of the book.
Nominations can be considered for two award cycles however, nominations are not carried over from one award cycle to the next. Nominations need to be submitted each year for consideration.
In addition to the nomination materials described above, complete and submit the required nomination form.
Self-nominations are encouraged. All awardees must be current ASA members at the time of the award ceremony at the Annual Meeting. One need not be a member to be nominated for an award. All nominators must be current members. Nominations sent from publishers will not be accepted. Please also be aware of ASA’s ethics disclosure and award revocation policies.
Submit the cover letter and nomination form to [email protected]. Please also send a copy of the nominated book either as a PDF to [email protected] or ship 10 physical copies of the publication to American Sociological Association, c/o Mark Fernando and Distinguished Scholarly Book Award, 1430 K ST, NW, Ste 600, Washington, DC 20005 (Please ship books as early as possible because of holiday-related shipping delays).
All nomination materials must be received by no later than January 1, 2024.
2024 Selection Committee
The selection committee is composed of nine members, each serving a staggered three-year term. Members are appointed from among the Association membership by the Council based on the recommendation of the Committee on Committees.
Richard E. Ocejo, Chair
Rick A. Baldoz
Kristen Barber
Jean Beaman
Caitlyn Collins
Emmanuel David
Yến Lê Espiritu
Jeff Hass
Angel Adams Parham
Past Recipients
2023 Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, University of Southern California, for Unfree: Migrant Domestic Work in Arab States (Stanford University Press, 2021)
Honorable Mention: Dorothy E. Roberts, University of Pennsylvania, for Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—And How Abolition Can Build a Safer World (Basic Books, 2022)
2022 Armando Lara-Millán, University of California–Berkeley, for Redistributing the Poor: Jails, Hospitals, and the Crisis of Law and Fiscal Austerity (Oxford University Press, 2021)
Honorable Mention: Poulami Roychowdhury, McGill University, Capable Women, Incapable States: Negotiating Violence and Rights in India (Oxford University Press, 2021)
Honorable Mention: Jeff Hass, University of Richmond, for Wartime Suffering and Survival (Oxford University Press, 2021)
2021 Celeste Watkins-Hayes, Remaking a Life: How Women Living with HIV/AIDS Confront Inequality (University of California Press, 2019)
2020 Tey Meadow, Trans Kids: Being Gendered in the Twenty-First Century (University of California Press, 2018)
2020 Hector Carrillo, Pathways of Desire: The Sexual Migration of Mexican Gay Men (University of Chicago Press, 2017)
Honorable Mention: Anju Mary Paul, Multinational Maids: Stepwise Migration in a Global Labor Market (Cambridge University Press, 2017)
2019 Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America’s Largest Criminal Court (Stanford University Press, 2016)
2018 Lauren B. Edelman, Working Law: Courts, Corporations, and Symbolic Civil Rights (University of Chicago Press, 2016)
2017 David Cook-Martin and David Scott FitzGerald, Culling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racial Immigration Policy in the Americas (Harvard University Press, 2014)
2016 Sanyu A. Mojola, Love, Money, and HIV: Becoming a Modern African Woman in the Age of AIDS (University of California Press, 2014).
2015 Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Laura T. Hamilton, Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality (Harvard University Press, 2013).
2014 Monica Prasad, The Land of Too Much: American Abundance and the Paradox of Poverty (Harvard University Press, 2012)
2014 Robert J. Sampson, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect (University of Chicago Press, 2012).
Honorable Mention: Claudio E. Benzecray, The Opera Fanatic: Ethnography of an Obsession (University of Chicago Press, 2011).
2013 Greta R. Krippner, Capitalizing on Crisis: the Political Origins of the Rise of Finance (Harvard University Press).
Honorable Mention: David Garland, Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press).
2012 Frank Dobbin, Inventing Equal Opportunity (Princeton University Press)
2012 Chandra Mukerji, Impossible Engineering: Technology and Territoriality on the Canal du Midi (Princeton University Press)
2011 Randall Collins, Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory (Princeton University Press)
2011 Marion Fourcade, Economists and Societies: Discipline and Profession in the United States, Britain and France, 1890s to 1990s (Princeton University Press)
2010 Philip Kasinitz, John H. Mollenkopf, Mary C. Waters, and Jennifer Holdaway, Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age (Russell Sage Foundation, 2008)
2009 Steven Epstein, Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research (University of Chicago Press, 2007)
2008 Robert Courtney Smith, Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants (University of California Press, 2006)
2007 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender and the New Racism (Routlege, 2005)
2007 Jerome Karabel, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (Houghton Mifflin, 2005)
2006 Edward Telles, Race in Another America:The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil (Princeton University Press, 2004)
Honorable Mention: Vivek Chibber Locked in Place : State-Building and Late Industrialization in India (Princeton University Press, 2003)
2005 Beverly J. Silver, Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalization since 1870 (Cambridge University Press, 2003)
2004 Mounira M. Charrad, States and Women’s Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco (University of California Press, 2001)
2003 Richard Lachmann, Capitalists in Spite of Themselves: Elite Conflict and Economic Transitions in Early Modern Europe (Oxford University Press, 2000)
2002 Alejandro Portes and Ruben G. Rumbaut, Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation (University of California Press and Russell Sage Foundation, 2001)
2001 William P. Bridges and Robert L. Nelson, Legalizing Gender Inequality: Courts, Markets, and Unequal Pay for Women in America (Cambridge University Press, 1999)
2000 Charles Tilly, Durable Inequality (University of California Press, 1998)
1999 Randal Collins, The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 1998)
1998 John Markoff, Abolition of Feudalism: Peasants, Lords and Legislators in the French Revolution (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996)
Honorable Mention: Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein, Making Ends Meet (Russell Sage Foundation, 1997); Sharon Hays, The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood (Yale University Press, 1996); Erik Olin Wright, Class Counts (Cambridge University Press, 1997)
1997 Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro, Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality (Routledge, 1995)
Honorable Mention: Diane Vaughan, The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA (University of Chicago Press, 1996)
1996 Murray Milner, Jr., Status and Sacredness: A General Theory of Status Relations and an Analysis of Indian Culture (Oxford University Press, 1994)
1995 Nancy A. Denton and Douglas S. Massey, American Apartheid (Harvard University Press, 1993)
1995 James B. McKee, Sociology and the Race Problem (University of Illinois Press, 1993)
1994 Mitchell Duneier, Slim’s Table (University of Chicago Press, 1992)
1993 Jack Goldstone, Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World (University of California Press, 1990)
1992 James S. Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory (Harvard University Press, 1990)
1991 Andrew Abbott, The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor (University of Chicago Press, 1988)
1990 John R. Logan and Harvey L. Molotch, Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place (University of California Press, 1987)
Special Recognition to Kim Scheppele, Legal Secrets: Equality and Efficiency in the Common Law (University of Chicago Press, 1988)
1989 Charles Tilly, The Contentious French (Harvard University Press, 1986)
1988 Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Volume 1 (Cambridge University Press, 1986)
1987 Andrew G. Walder, Communist Neo-Traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese Industry (University of California Press, 1986)
1986 Aldon D. Morris, Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (Free Press, 1984)
1986 Lenore J. Weitzman, The Divorce Revolution: The Unexpected Social and Economic Consequences for Women and Children in American (Free Press, 1985)
