The American Sociological Association 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. For more information about the American Sociological Association, sponsor of these awards, click American Sociological Association.
2023 Unfree: Migrant Domestic Work in Arab States by Rhacel Salazar Parreñas
2022 Redistributing the poor : jails, hospitals, and the crisis of law and fiscal austerity by Armando Lara-Millán, University of California–Berkeley; Capable women, incapable states : negotiating violence and rights in India by Poulami Roychowdhury (honorable mention); Wartime suffering and survival : the human condition under siege in the blockade of Leningrad, 1941-1944 by Jeff Hass (honorable mention)
2021 Remaking a life : how women living with HIV/AIDS confront inequality by Celeste Watkins-Hayes
2020 Trans kids : being gendered in the twenty-first century by Tey Meadow; Pathways of desire : the sexual migration of Mexican gay men by Hector Carrillo; Multinational maids : stepwise migration in a global labor market by Anju Mary Paul (honorable Mention)
2019 Crook County : racism and injustice in America's largest criminal court by Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve
2018 Working law : courts, corporations, and symbolic civil rights by Lauren B. Edelman
2017 Culling the masses : the democratic origins of racist immigration policy in the Americas by David Cook-Martin and David Scott FitzGerald
2016 Love, money, and HIV : becoming a modern African woman in the age of AIDS by Sanyu A. Mojola
2015 Paying for the party : how college maintains inequality by Elizabeth A. Armstrong and Laura T. Hamilton
2014 The land of too much : American abundance and the paradox of poverty by Monica Prasad; Great American city : Chicago and the enduring neighborhood effect by Robert Sampson; The opera fanatic : ethnography of an obsession by Claudio E. Benzecry (honorable mention)
2013 Capitalizing on crisis : the political origins of the rise of finance by Greta R. Krippner; Peculiar institution : America's death penalty in an age of abolition by David Garland (honorable mention)
2012 Inventing equal opportunity by Frank Dobbin; Impossible engineering : technology and territoriality on the Canal du Midi by Chandra Mukerji
2011 Violence : a micro-sociological theory by Randall Collins; Economists and societies : discipline and profession in the United States, Britain and France, 1890s to 1990s by Marion Fourcade
2010 Inheriting the city : the children of immigrants come of age by Philip Kasinitz, John H. Mollenkopf, Mary C. Waters, and Jennifer Holdaway
2009 Inclusion : the politics of difference in medical research by Steven Epstein
2008 Mexican New York : transnational lives of new immigrants by Robert Courtney Smith
2007 Black sexual politics : African Americans, gender, and the new racism by Patricia Hill Collins; The chosen : the hidden history of admission and exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton by Jerome Karabel
2006 Race in another America : the significance of skin color in Brazil by Edward Telles; Locked in place : state-building and late industrialization in India by Vivek Chibber (honorable mention)
2005 Forces of labor : workers' movements and globalization since 1870 by Beverly J. Silver
2004 States and women's rights : the making of postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco by Mounira M. Charrad
2003 Capitalists in spite of themselves : elite conflict and economic transitions in early modern Europe by Richard Lachmann
2002 Legacies : the story of the immigrant second generation by Alejandro Portes and Ruben G. Rumbaut
2001 Legalizing gender inequality : courts, markets, and unequal pay for women in America by William P. Bridges and Robert L. Nelson
2000 Durable inequality by Charles Tilly
1999 The sociology of philosophies : a global theory of intellectual change by Randall Collins
1998 The abolition of feudalism : peasants, lords, and legislators in the French Revolution by John Markoff; Making ends meet : how single mothers survive welfare and low-wage work by Kathryn Edin and Laura Lein (honorable mention); The cultural contradictions of motherhood by Sharon Hays (honorable mention); Class counts : comparative studies in class analysis by Erik Olin Wright (honorable mention)
1997 Black wealth/white wealth : a new perspective on racial inequality by Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro; The Challenger launch decision : risky technology, culture, and deviance at NASA by Diane Vaughan (honorable mention)
1996 Status and sacredness : a general theory of status relations and an analysis of Indian culture by Murray Milner, Jr.
1995 American apartheid : segregation and the making of the underclass by Nancy A. Denton and Douglas S. Massey; Sociology and the race problem : the failure of a perspective by James B. McKee
1994 Slim's table : race, respectability, and masculinity by Mitchell Duneier
1993 Revolution and rebellion in the early modern world by Jack Goldstone
1992 Foundations of social theory by James S. Coleman
1991 The system of professions : an essay on the division of expert labor by Andrew Abbott
1990 Urban fortunes : the political economy of place by John R. Logan and Harvey L. Molotch; Special Recognition to Legal secrets : equality and efficiency in the common law by Kim Scheppele
1989 The contentious French by Charles Tilly
1988 The sources of social power, volume 1 : A history of power from the beginning to A.D. 1760 by Michael Mann
1987 Communist neo-traditionalism : work and authority in Chinese society by Andrew G. Walder
1986 The origins of the civil rights movement : Black communities organizing for change by Aldon D. Morris; The divorce revolution : the unexpected social and economic consequences for women and children in America by Lenore J. Weitzman
The PROSE awards
The PROSE Awards annually recognize the very best in professional and scholarly publishing by bringing attention to distinguished books, journals, and electronic content in over 40 categories. Judged by peer publishers, librarians, and medical professionals since 1976, the PROSE Awards are extraordinary for their breadth and depth. For more information about these awards, click PROSE Awards.
For books related to Anthropology and Archaeology and Sociology and Social Work (the award changed focus over time)
2023 Reclaiming Two-Spirits: Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal & Sovereignty in Native America by Gregory D. Smithers
2022 Halfway home : race, punishment, and the afterlife of mass incarceration by Reuben Miller
2021 The tragedy of heterosexuality by Jane Ward
2020 Making motherhood work : how women manage careers and caregiving by Caitlyn Collins
2019 The trans generation : how trans kids (and their parents) are creating a gender revolution by Ann Travers
2018 Inka history in Knots : reading khipus as primary sources By Gary Urton; The plague of war : Athens, Sparta, and the struggle for ancient Greece by Jennifer Roberts (honorable mention); Lissa : a story about medical promise, friendship, and revolution by Sherine aHamdy and Coleman Nye ; illustrated by Sarula Bao and Caroline Brewer; The limits of whiteness : Iranian Americans and the everyday politics of race by Neda Maghbouleh; Someone to talk to by Mario Luis Small (honorable mention)
2017 Enduring uncertainty : deportation, punishment and everyday life by Ines Hasselberg; Thunder shaman : making history with Mapuche spirits in Chile and Patagonia by Ana Mariella Bacigalupo (honorable mention); Destroyer of the gods : early Christian distinctiveness in the Roman world by Larry W. Hurtado; The Byzantine Dark Ages by Michael J. Decker (honorable mention)
2016 European products : making and unmaking heritage in Cyprus by Gisela Welz; The analysis of burned human remains, edited by Christopher W. Schmidt and Steven A. Symes (honorable mention); The scholar denied : W. E. B. Du Bois and the birth of modern sociology by Aldon D. Morris; American zoo : a sociological safari by David Grazian (honorable mention); America's safest city : delinquency and modernity in suburbia by Simon I. Singer (honorable mention)
2015 Ancient pathways, ancestral knowledge : ethnobotany and ecological wisdom of Indigenous peoples of northwestern North America by Nancy J. Turner; 1177 B.C. : the year civilization collapsed by Eric H. Cline (honorable mention); Nomadism in Iran : from antiquity to the modern era by D. T. Potts (honorable mention); Doctors Without Borders : humanitarian quests, impossible dreams of Medicins Sans Frontieres by Renee C. Fox; Deeply divided : racial politics and social movements in postwar America by Doug McAdam and Karina Kloos (honorable mention); Reluctant witness : survivors, their children, and the rise of Holocaust consciousness by Arlene Stein (honorable mention)
2013 The body in history : Europe from the Paleolithic to the future, edited by John Robb and Oliver J.T. Harris; Places of pain : forced displacement, popular memory and trans-local identities in Bosnian war-torn communities by Hariz Halilovich (honorable mention)
2012 Ancient Nubia : African kingdoms on the Nile, edited by Majorie M. Fisher, Peter Lacovara, Salima Ikram, and Sue D’Auria; photographs by Chester Higgins, Jr.; How ancient Europeans saw the world : vision, patterns, and the shaping of the mind in prehistoric times by Peter S. Wells (honorable mention)
2011 Histories of Peirene : a Corinthian fountain in three millennia by Betsey Ann Robinson; The evolution of the human head by Daniel Lieberman (honorable mention); Exceptional people : how migration shaped our world and will define our future by Ian Goldin, Geoffrey Cameron, and Meera Balarajan; Popular crime : reflections on the celebration of violence by Bill James (honorable mention)
2010 An anthropology of biomedicine by Margaret Lock & Vinh-Kim Nguyen; Favela : four decades of living on the edge in Rio de Janeiro by Janice Perlman; Fire in the heart : how white activists embrace racial justice by Mark R. Warren (honorable mention); The edge of the woods : Iroquoia, 1534-1701 by Jon Parmenter (honorable mention); The Jeffersons at Shadwell by Susan Kern (honorable mention)
2009 Knossos & the prophets of modernism by Cathy Gere; Dangerous citizens : the Greek left and the terror of the state by Neni Panourgia (honorable mention); Codes of the underworld : how criminals communicate by Diego Gambetta; Black men can't shoot by Scott N. Brooks (honorable mention); Why David sometimes wins : leadership, organization, and strategy in the California farm worker movement by Marshall Ganz (honorable mention)
2008 A Zapotec natural history : trees, herbs, and flowers, birds, beasts, and bugs in the life of San Juan Gbëë by Eugene Hunn; Digging in the City of Brotherly Love : stories from Philadelphia archaeology by Rebecca Yamin (honorable mention); Jamaican food : history, biology, culture by B. W. Higman (honorable mention); Cop in the hood : my year policing Baltimore’s eastern district by Peter Moskos; New tech, new ties : how mobile communication is reshaping social cohesion by Rich Ling (honorable mention)
2007 Antiquity recovered : the legacy of Pompeii and Herculaneum by Victoria C. Gardner Coates and Jon L. Seydl; Maya calendar origins : monuments, mythistory, and the materialization of time by Prudence M. Rice (honorable mention); Coercive control : the entrapment of women in personal life by Evan Stark; Poverty and discrimination by Kevin Lang (honorable mention)
2006 Wondrous curiosities : ancient Egypt at the British Museum by Stephanie Moser; Stories in stone : conserving mosaics of Roman Africa : masterpieces from the national museums of Tunisia by Aïcha Ben Abed and Tevuy Ball (honorable mention); The civil sphere by Jeffrey C. Alexander; Territory, authority, rights : from medieval to global assemblages by Saskia Sassen (honorable mention)
2005 The career mystique : cracks in the American dream by Phyllis Moen and Patricia Roehling; First farmers : the origins of agricultural societies by Peter Bellwood; The human fossil record, volume four : craniodental morphology of early hominids and overview by Jeffrey H Schwartz and Ian Tattersall (honorable mention)
2004 The human fossil record, volume three : brain endocasts - the paleoneurological evidence by Ralph L. Halloway, Douglas C. Broadfield, and Michael S. Yuan; Appalachian folkways by John B. Rehder
2003 Lothagam : the dawn of humanity in eastern Africa by Meave G. Leakey and John M. Harris; Remaking the American mainstream : assimilation and contemporary immigration by Richard Alba and Victor Nee
2002 Heat wave : a social autopsy of disaster in Chicago by Eric Klinenberg; The Penitente Brotherhood : patriarchy and Hispano-Catholicism in New Mexico by Michael P. Carroll
2001 Stand and prosper : private Black colleges and their students by Henry N. Drewry and Humphrey Doermann ; in collaboration with Susan H. Anderson
2000 American project : the rise and fall of a modern ghetto by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh; The book of Jerry Falwell : fundamentalist language and politics by Susan Friend Harding (honorable mention)
1999 The barbarians speak : how the conquered peoples shaped Roman Europe by Peter S. Wells
1998 The sociology of philosophies : a global theory of intellectual change by Randall Collins
1997 The anatomy of disgust by William Ian Miller
1996 Encyclopedia of world cultures, David Levinson, editor in chief
1995 The power of place : urban landscapes as public history by Dolores Hayden
1994 The homeless by Christopher Jencks
1993 The Nariokotome Homo Erectus skeleton, edited by Alan Walker and Richard Leakey
1991 The middle ground : Indians, empires, and republics in the Great Lakes region, 1650-1815 by Richard White
The Midwest Sociological Society Distinguished Book Award is presented to a book, published by a member of the Society in the previous three years, which makes an exemplary, original, and substantive contribution to sociological understanding. The award carries a cash prize of $250. The award helps to fulfill the scholarly Mission of the Society of "advancing sociological knowledge." For more information about the Midwest Sociological Society, sponsor of these awards, click Midwest Sociological Society.
2022 Upsold : real estate agents, prices, and neighborhood inequality by Max Besbris
2021 Legal passing : navigating undocumented life and local immigration law by Angela S. García
2020 Lesson plans : the institutional demands of becoming a teacher by Judson G. Everitt
2019 Modernity and the Jews in western social thought by Chad Goldberg
2018 Engines of anxiety : academic rankings, reputation, and accountability by Wendy Espeland and Michael Sauder; Connecting in college : how friendship networks matter for academic and social success by Janice McCabe (honorable mention)
2017 Culling the masses : the democratic origins of racist immigration policy in the Americas by David FitzGerald and David Cook-Martín
2016 Chicago hustle and flow : gangs, gangsta rap, and social class by Geoff Harkness
2015 Blue juice : euthanasia in veterinary medicine by Dr. Patricia Morris
2014 Lincoln, Inc. : selling the sixteenth president in contemporary America by Jackie Hogan
2013 The paradox of youth violence by J. William "Jack" Spencer; The tender cut : inside the hidden world of self-injury by Patricia A. Adler and Peter Adler (honorable mention)
2012 Behind the backlash : Muslim Americans after 9/11 by Lori Peek
2011 Counted out : same-sex relations and Americans' definitions of family by Brian Powell, Catherine Bolzendahl, Claudia Geist, and Lala Carr Steelman
2010 Deliverance and submission : evangelical women and the negotiation of patriarchy in South Korea by Kelly Chong
2009 Wannabes, goths, and Christians : the boundaries of sex, style, and status by Amy Wilkins; and Postindustrial peasants : the illusion of middle-class prosperity by Kevin Leicht and Scott Fitzgerald
2008 Black intimacies : a gender perspective on families and relationships by Shirley A. Hill
The North American Society for the Sociology of Sport Outstanding Book Award is presented to the author of the most outstanding book published in the current and previous two calendar years. The North American Society for the Sociology of Sport is organized exclusively for educational purposes to promote, stimulate, and encourage the sociological study of play, games, and sport, to support and cooperate with local, national and international organizations having the same purposes, and to organize and arrange meetings and issue publications concerning the purpose of the Society. For more information about the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, click North American Society for the Sociology of Sport.
2022 Fighting visibility, fighting visibility : sports media and female athletes by Jennifer McClearen
2021 Changing on the fly : hockey through the voices of South Asian Canadians by Courtney Szto
2020 Privilege at play : class, race, gender and golf in Mexico by Hugo Ceron-Anaya
2019 Moving boarders : skateboarding and the changing landscape of urban youth sports by Matthew Atencio, Becky Beal, E. Missy Wright, & ZáNean McClain
2018 When women rule the court : gender, race, and Japanese American basketball by Nicole Willms
2017 Sex testing : gender policing in women's sports by Lindsay Parks Pieper
2016 Is there life after football? : surviving the NFL by James Holstein, Richard Jones, and George Koonce
2015 Dominican baseball : new pride, old prejudice by Alan Klein
2014 Discipline and indulgence : college football, media, and the American way of life during the Cold War by Jeffrey Montez de Oca
2013 Critical pedagogy, physical education, and urban schooling by Katie Fitzpatrick
2012 Sport, spectacle, and NASCAR nation : consumption and the cultural politics of neoliberalism by Joshua Newman and Michael Giardina
2011 Skate life : re-imagining white masculinity by Emily Chivers Yochim
2010 Body panic : gender, health and the selling of fitness by Shari L. Dworkin and Faye Linda Wachs
2009 The quality of home runs : the passion, politics, and language of Cuban baseball by Thomas F. Carter
2008 Race, sport, and the American dream by Earl Smith
2007 Foucault, sport and exercise : power knowledge and transforming the self by Pirkko Markula and Richard Pringle
2006 Sporting pedagogies : performing culture & identity in the global arena by Michael D. Giardina
2005 Protecting home : class, race, and masculinity in boys' baseball by Sherri Grasmuck
2004 Taking the field : women, men and sports by Michael Messner
2003 Saying it's so : a cultural history of the Black Sox scandal by Daniel A. Nathan
2002 Men at play : a working understanding of professional hockey by Michael Robidoux
2001 Higher goals : women's ice hockey and the politics of gender by Nancy Theberge
2000 The rites of men : manhood, politics, and the culture of sport by Varda Burstyn
1999 Sport matters : sociological studies of sport, violence, and civilization by Eric Dunning
1998 Boxing and society : an international analysis by John Sugden
1997 Baseball on the border : a tale of two Laredos by Alan Klein
1996 No award
1995 Outsiders in the clubhouse : the world of women's professional golf by Todd Crosset
1994 Sporting females : critical issues in the history and sociology of women's sports by Jennifer Hargreaves
1993 Power at play : sport and the problems of masculinity by Michael Messner
C. Wright Mills Award
Consistent with Mills' dedication to a search for a sophisticated understanding of the individual and society, this award is given for that book that most effectively (1) critically addresses an issue of contemporary public importance, (2) brings to the topic a fresh, imaginative perspective, (3) advances social scientific understanding of the topic, (4) displays a theoretically informed view and empirical orientation, (5) evinces quality in style of writing, and (6) explicitly or implicitly contains implications for courses of action. For more information about the Society for the Study of Social Problems, sponsor of this award, click Society for the Study of Social Problems.
2022 Indefinite: doing time in jail by Michael L. Walker
2021 Getting something to eat in Jackson : race, class, and food in the American South by Dr. Joseph C. Ewoodzie, Jr.
2020 Health care off the books : poverty, illness, and strategies for survival in urban America by Danielle T. Raudenbush
2019 Flatlining : race, work, and health care in the new economy by Adia Harvey Wingfield
2018 The making of a teenage service class : poverty and mobility in an American city by Ranita Ray
2017 Juárez girls rising : transformative education in times of dystopia by Claudia G. Cervantes-Soon
2016 Lives in limbo : undocumented and coming of age in America by Roberto G. Gonzales
2015 Unequal city : race, schools, and perceptions of injustice by Carla Shedd
2014 Renegade dreams : living through injury in gangland Chicago by Laurence Ralph
2013 The American non-dilemma : racial inequality without racism by Nancy DiTomaso
2012 Three worlds of relief : race, immigration, and the American welfare state from the Progressive Era to the New Deal by Cybelle Fox
2011 Privilege : the making of an adolescent elite at St. Paul's School by Shamus Rahman Khan
2010 Love in the time of AIDS : inequality, gender, and rights in South Africa by Mark Hunter
2009 Unanticipated gains : origins of network inequality in everyday life by Mario Luis Small
2008 Cracks in the pavement : social change and resilience in poor neighborhoods by Martín Sánchez-Jankowski
2007 Brewing justice : fair trade coffee, sustainability, and survival by Daniel Jaffee
2006 Off the books : the underground economy of the urban poor by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh
2005 Made in China : women factory workers in a global workplace by Pun Ngai
2004 Villa Victoria : the transformation of social capital in a Boston barrio by Mario Luis Small
2003 Flat broke with children : women in the age of welfare reform by Sharon Hays
2002 The job training charade by Gordon Lafer; Garbage wars : the struggle for environmental justice in Chicago by David N. Pellow
2001 Doméstica : immigrant workers cleaning and caring in the shadows of affluence by Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo
2000 The dignity of working men : morality and the boundaries of race, class, and immigration by Michéle Lamont
1999 Sidewalk by Mitchell Duneier
1998 The making of the unborn patient : a social anatomy of fetal surgery by Monica J. Casper
1997 Mean streets : youth crime and homelessness by John Hagan and Bill McCarthy
1996 Impure science : AIDS, activism, and the politics of knowledge by Steven Epstein
1995 In search of respect : selling crack in El Barrio by Philippe Bourgois (2d ed (2003) here); Black wealth/white wealth : a new perspective on racial inequality by Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro (10th anniversary edition (2006) here)
1994 What machines can't do : politics and technology in the industrial enterprise by Robert Thomas
1993 Checkerboard Square : culture and resistance in a homeless community by David Wagner
1992 Life is hard : machismo, danger, and the intimacy of power in Nicaragua by Roger Lancaster
1991 Landscapes of power : from Detroit to Disney World by Sharon Zukin
1989 Freedom Summer by Douglas McAdam; Whose keeper? : social science and moral obligation by Alan Wolfe
1988 Socialist entrepreneurs : embourgeoisement in rural Hungary by Ivan Szeleny; Stubborn children : controlling delinquency in the United States, 1640-1981 by John Sutton
1987 The truly disadvantaged : the inner city, the underclass, and public policy by William J. Wilson
1986 The contentious French by Charles Tilly; The secret trauma : incest in the lives of girls and women by Diana E. H. Russell
1985 Pricing the priceless child : the changing social value of children by Viviana A. Zelizer
1984 The inner circle : large corporations and the rise of business political activity in the U.S. and U.K. by Michael Useem; Morality and power in a Chinese village by Richard Madsen
1983 The city and the grassroots : a cross-cultural theory of urban social movements by Manuel Castello
1982 The social transformation of American medicine by Paul Starr
1981 Father-daughter incest by Judith Lewis Herman
1980 Street-level bureaucracy : dilemmas of the individual in public services by Michael Lipsky
1979 States and social revolutions : a comparative analysis of France, Russia, and China by Theda Skocpol
1978 The working class in welfare capitalism : work, unions, and politics in Sweden by Walter Korpi
1977 Men and women of the corporation by Rosabeth Moss Kanter
1976 The myth of marginality : urban poverty and politics in Rio de Janeiro by Janice E. Perlman
1975 Advocacy & objectivity : a crisis in the professionalization of American social science, 1865-1905 by Mary O. Furner
1974 Labor and monopoly capital; the degradation of work in the twentieth century by Harry Braverman
1973 Private lives and public surveillance : social control in the computer age by James B. Rule; The dialectics of legal repression; Black rebels before the American courts by Isaac D. Balbus
1972 Theories of poverty and underemployment : orthodox, radical, and dual labor market perspectives by David M. Gordon
1971 Regulating the poor; the functions of public welfare by Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward (updated ed. (1993) here)
1970 Stations of the lost; the treatment of skid row alcoholics by Jacqueline P. Wiseman
1969 Tearoom trade : impersonal sex in public places by Laud Humphreys
1968 The social order of the slum; ethnicity and territory in the inner city by Gerald D. Suttles
1967 Tally's corner; a study of Negro streetcorner men by Elliot Liebow; Delinquency research; an appraisal of analytical methods by Travis Hirschi and Hanan C. Selvin
1966 Justice without trial; law enforcement in democratic society by Jerome H. Skolnick (3d ed. (1994) here)
1965 The new utopians, a study of system design and social change by Robert Boguslaw
1964 Delinquency and drift by David Matza
Charles Horton Cooley Award
The Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction is an international social science professional organization of scholars interested in qualitative, especially interactionist, research. This award is given annually to a scholar for the publication of a book that represents an important contribution in the field of symbolic interaction. For more information about the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, the sponsor of this award, click Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction.
2023 Dangerous Fun: The Social Lives of Big Wave Surfers by Ugo Corte
2022 Indefinite : doing time in jail by Michael J. Walker
2021 Tacit racism by Anne Warfield Rawls and Waverly Duck
2020 Situational breakdowns : understanding protest violence and other surprising outcomes by Anne Nassauer
2019 Taken for granted : the remarkable power of the unremarkable by Eviatar Zerubavel
2018 Blowin' up : rap dreams in South Central by Jooyoung Lee
2017 Inner speech and the dialogical self by Norbert Wiley; The color of love : racial features, stigma, and socialization in black Brazilian families by Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman
2016 Becoming Mead : the social process of academic knowledge by Daniel R. Huebner
2015 Seeing the light : the social logic of personal discovery by Thomas DeGloma
2014 Baby boomer rock 'n' roll fans : the music never ends by Joseph Kotarba
2013 Closure : the rush to end grief and what it costs us by Nancy Berns
2012 The textures of time : agency and temporal experience by Michael G. Flaherty; The tender cut : inside the hidden world of self-injury by Patricia A. Adler and Peter Adler (honorable mention); The seduction of ethics : transforming the social sciences by Will C. van den Hoonard (honorable mention)
2011 What is constructionism? : navigating its use in sociology by Scott R. Harris
2010 Rave culture : the alteration and decline of a Philadelphia music scene by Tammy L. Anderson
2009 Revision : autoethnographic reflections on life and work by Carolyn Ellis
2008 Authors of the storm : meteorologists and the culture of prediction by Gary Alan Fine
2007 Terrorism and the politics of fear by David L. Altheide
2006 Situational analysis : grounded theory after the postmodern turn by Adele E. Clarke; Accounts of innocence : sexual abuse, trauma, and the self by Joseph E. Davis
2005 Courting disaster : intimate stalking, culture, and criminal justice by Jennifer Dunn
2004 Creating fear : news and the construction of crisis by David Altheide
2003 Roads to dystopia : sociological essays on the postmodern condition by Stanford Lyman
2002 Dancing at Armageddon : survivalism and chaos in modern times by Richard G. Mitchell
2001 The presence of self by Robert Perinbanayagam
2000 Understanding dogs : living and working with canine companions by Clinton R. Sanders
1999 Morel tales : the culture of mushrooming by Gary Alan Fine
1998 Fields of play : constructing an academic life by Laurel Richardson
1997 Regarding animals by Arnold Arluke and Clinton Sanders
1996 Speaking of sadness : depression, disconnection, and the meaning of illness by David Karp
1995 Teen mothers : citizens or dependents? by Ruth Horowitz; A world without words : the social construction of children born deaf and blind by David Goode
1994 The battered woman and shelters : the social construction of wife abuse by Donileen Loseke
1993 Down on their luck : a study of homeless street people by David Snow and Leon Anderson
1992 Good days, bad days : the self in chronic illness and time by Kathy Charmaz
1991 Threatened children : rhetoric and concern about child-victims by Joel Best
1990 Dilemmas of the American self by John P. Hewitt; Symbolic communication : signifying calls and the police response by Peter K. Manning (honorable mention)
1989 Seductions of crime : moral and sensual attractions in doing evil by Jack Katz; Tales of the field : on writing ethnography by John Van Maanen (honorable mention)
1988 The alcoholic self by Norman Denzin
1987 Pathways from heroin addiction : recovery without treatment by Patrick Biernacki; Wheeling and dealing : an ethnography of an upper-level drug dealing and smuggling community by Patricia A. Adler
1986 Media power by David Altheide
1985 Abortion and the politics of motherhood by Kristen Luker
1984 The managed heart : commercialization of human feeling by Arlie Hochschild
1983 The culture of public problems : drinking-driving and the symbolic order by Joseph Gusfield
1982 Not given
1981 Deviance and medicalization : from badness to sickness by Peter Conrad and Joseph Schneider (Updated ed. (1992) here)
1980 Howard S. Becker, for significant contributions to the perspective
1979 Negotiations : varieties, contexts, processes, and social order by Anselm Strauss
1978 Turner, R. H. (1976). The Real Self: From Institution to Impulse. American Journal of Sociology, 81(5), 989–1016. https://doi.org/10.1086/226183; Turner, R. H. (1978). The Role and the Person. American Journal of Sociology, 84(1), 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1086/226738