2025 ASA PEWS Section Award Winners
PEWS Immanuel Wallerstein Memorial Book Award:
Honorable Mention, Book Award:
Mniga Mariam 2024 , Recolonizing Africa: An Ethnography of Land Acquisition, Mining, and Resource Control; Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Explaining how the legacy of colonialism and the nature of the liberal economy play a significant role in the development of Africa today, keeping Africa poor and dependent, this book explains how trade liberalization, deregulation, and privatization had opened doors for the New Scramble for Africa.
Green technology and the high demand for electronics have intensified Africa’s role as a supplier of raw materials, natural resources, and cheap labor and as a large market of more than one billion people in the global economy. This unique ethnographic study, with elements of autoethnography, starts with the author's journey to Bulyanhulu, Tanzania, one of the largest gold mines in Africa, and moves to a broader analysis that reveals the systemic violence of resource extraction. Focus groups, interviews, and observations demonstrate the lack of distributive justice and intersectional equality in the process of land acquisition and resource extraction, described by villagers in racialized and gendered terms as exploitative and part of a racist system that fails to provide a fair distribution of benefits to local people.
Recolonizing Africa examines resource conflicts among local people, governments, and transnational corporations from Europe, North America, and Asia, revealing how global systemic violence and irresponsible business practices precipitate economic inequality between African and financially rich nations – threatening peace and security, indigenous rights, and the environment.
Distinguished Professional (Faculty/Postdoctoral Fellow) Article Award:
McDermott, Joshua Lew. 2024. “Difference Between Global South Cities: Mexico City, Freetown and the Global Division of Urban Informal Labour.” Urban Studies 62(5):932‐953.
Honorable Mention, Article Award:
Sikirica, Amanda. 2024. “Where Are Fossil Fuels Displaced by Alternatives? World-Systems and Energy Transitions.” Journal of World-Systems Research 30(1):249‐275.
Terence K. Hopkins Graduate Student Article Award:
Roy, Rianka. 2024. “Covert Carcerality for ‘ High-Income Cheap Labor’: Indian Tech Workers in the United States.” Sociological Forum 40(1):50-64.
Honorable Mention, Terence K. Hopkins Graduate Student Article Award:
Sharma, Aryaman. 2023. “Assessing Core-Monopolization and the Possibilities for the Semi-Periphery in the World-System Today.” Journal of World-Systems Research 29(2):480‐504.
Honorable Mention, Terence K. Hopkins Graduate Student Article Award:
Solanki, Durgesh. “Plaguing the Empire: Repertoires of Colonial Governance.”
The PEWS Anti-Oppression Award:
Oscar Gil-García, University at Buffalo (SUNY), Anthropology
Congratulations to the winners, and thank you to the members of the award committees for their service!
Owolabi, Olukunle P.. 2023. Ruling Emancipated Slaves and Indigenous Subjects. Oxford University Press.
An examination of the divergent developmental legacies of forced settlement and colonial occupation on both sides of the Black Atlantic world.
Olukunle P. Owolabi
Distinguishes between forced settlement and colonial occupation as distinct modes of imperial domination in the Global South
Uses statistical data methods and comparative-historical analysis to analyze the long-term developmental consequences of forced settlement and colonial occupation across multiple colonial empires
Highlights significant variations in colonial state-building, long-term development, and postcolonial democratization across the Black Atlantic world
Draws evidence from more than ninety developing countries that gained independence after World War II
2024 ASA PEWS Section Award Winners
PEWS Immanuel Wallerstein Memorial Book Award:
Radhakrishnan, Smitha., Solari, Cinzia D.. 2023. The Gender Order of Neoliberalism. United Kingdom: Polity Press.
Honorable Mention, Book Award:
Gates, Leslie C. 2023. Capitalist Outsiders: Oil's Legacies in Mexico and Venezuela. United States: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Distinguished Professional (Faculty/Postdoctoral Fellow) Article Award:
Levenson, Zachary and Marcel Paret. 2023. “The Three Dialectics of Racial Capitalism: From South Africa to the U.S. and Back Again.” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 20(2):333‐351.
Honorable Mention, Article Award:
Joosse, Paul and Dominik Zelinsky. 2023. “Charismatic Mimicry: Innovation and Imitation in the Case of Volodymyr Zelensky.” Sociological Theory 41(3):201-228.
Honorable Mention, Article Award:
Pandian, Roshan K.. 2024. “The Decline of Global Inequality in the 21st Century: Reconsidering the Industrial Transformation Thesis.” American Journal of Sociology 129(5):1493-1534.
Honorable Mention, Article Award:
Jorgenson, Andrew K., Brett Clark, Ryan P. Thombs, Jeffrey Kentor, Jennifer E. Givens, Xiaorui Huang, Hassan El Tinay, Daniel Auerbach, and Matthew C. Mahutga. 2023. “Guns versus Climate: How Militarization Amplifies the Effect of Economic Growth on Carbon Emissions.” American Sociological Review 88(3):418-453.
Terence K. Hopkins Graduate Student Article Award:
Movahed, Masoud. 2023. “Varieties of capitalism and income inequality.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 64(6):1-37. (Written and accepted for publication when still a student.)
Honorable Mention, Terence K. Hopkins Graduate Student Article Award:
Hoppe, Alexander D. “Sure It Works in Practice, but Does It Work in Theory? The Geography of Skill and the Problem of Unique Capabilities in the Global Fashion Industry.”
Honorable Mention, Terence K. Hopkins Graduate Student Article Award:
Gleckman-Krut, Miriam. “A Dangerous Precedent: South Africa's Management of Sexuality And Migration During Colonization And Apartheid (1913 ‐ 1991).”
Distinguished Teaching Award:
Beverly Silver, Johns Hopkins University Sociology Congratulations to the winners and thank you to all the members of the award committees for their service!