American Sociological Association: Theory Section Awards Recipients History

Section on Theory Past Award Recipients

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The Theory Prize
The Theory Prize was first awarded in 1980.

YEAR	NAME	AFFILIATION AT TIME OF AWARD	TITLE
2012	John Levi Martin	University of Chicago	2011. The Explanation of Social Action. New York: Oxford University Press.
2011	Stephen Vaisey		"Motivation and Justification: A Dual-Process Model of Culture in Action" (AJS, May 2009).
2010	John Levi Martin	University of Chicago	Social Structures. Princeton University Press, 2009.
2009	Andreas Wimmer	UCLA
2008	James M. Jasper and William H. Sewell Jr.		Getting Your Way: Strategic Dilemmas in the Real World (University of Chicago Press) and Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation (University of Chicago Press).
2007	Jeffrey Alexander		"Cultural Pragmatics: Social Performance between Ritual and Strategy," published in Sociological Theory, 2004
2006	Karin Knorr Cetina and Urs Bruegger		"Global Microstructures: The Virtual Societies of Financial Markets," published in the American Journal of Sociology, 2002
2005	Noah Mark	Stanford University	"Culture and Competition: Homophily and Distancing Explanations for Cultural Niches"
2004	Andrew Abbott	University of Chicago	Chaos of the Disciplines (University of Chicago Press, 2001)
2003	Edward J. Lawler	Cornell University	“An Affect Theory of Social Exchange”
2002	R.S. Perinbanayagam	Hunter College of the City University of New York	The Presence of Self
2001	Paul DiMaggio	Princeton University	“Culture and Cognition”
2000	Carol A. Heimner and Lisa R. Staffen	Northwestern University	For the Sake of the Children: The Social Organization and Responsibility in the Hospital and the Home
1999	Noah Mark	Stanford University	“Beyond Individual Differences: Social Differentiation from First Principles.”
1998	Linda D. Molm	University of Arizona	Coercive Power in Social Exchange
1997	William H. Sewell, Jr.	University of Chicago	“Historical Events as Transformations of Structures: Inventing Revolution at the Bastille”
1996	Moishe Postone	University of Chicago	Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory. 1993. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
1995	Carol A. Heimer	Northwestern University	“Doing Your Job and Helping Your Friends: Universalistic Norms about Obligations to Particular Others in Networks.” Pp. 143-164 in Networks and Organization: Structure, Form and Action, edited by N. Nohria and R. G. Eccles. 1995. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
1994	Donald Black	University of Virginia	The Social Structure of Right and Wrong. 1993. San Diego: Academic Press.
1993	Michael W. Macy	Brandeis University	“Social Learning and the Structure of Collective Action.” Pp. 1-36 in Advances in Group Processes, Vol 10, edited by E. Lawler, B. Markovsky, K. Heimer, and J. O’Brien. 1993. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
1992	None given
1991	Alan Wolfe		“Mind, Self, Society, and Computer: Artificial Intelligence and the Sociology of Mind.” 1991. American Journal of Sociology 96:1073-1096.
1990	Stephen Kalberg		“Rationalization of Action in Max Weber's Sociology of Religion.” 1990. Sociological Theory 8: 58-84.
1989	Daniel Chambliss	Hamilton College	“The Mundanity of Excellence: An Ethnographic Report on Stratification and Olympic Swimmers.” 1989. Sociological Theory 7:70-86.
1988	None given
1987	Norbert Wiley	University of Illinois	“Early American Sociology and the Polish Peasant.” 1986. Sociological Theory 4: 21-40.
1986	Ann Shola Orloff Theda Skocpol		“Why Not Equal Protection? Explaining the Politics of Public School Spending in Britain, 1900-1911, and the United States, 1880's-1920's.” 1986. American Sociological Review 49: 726-50.
1985	Mark Granovetter		“Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness.” 1985. American Journal of Sociology 91: 418-510.
1984	Donald Carveth		“Psychoanalysis and Social Theory: The Hobbesian Problem Revisited.” 1984. Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought 7: 43-98.
1983	None given
1982	Randall Collins		“On the Microfoundations of Macrosociology.” 1981. American Journal of Sociology 86: 984-1014.
1981	None given
1980	David Rubinstein		“The Concepts of Action in the Social Sciences.” 1977. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 7: 209-236.

Shils-Coleman Prize for Best Graduate Student Paper
Award established in 1996.

YEAR	NAME	AFFILIATION AT TIME OF AWARD	TITLE
2012	Margaret Frye	University of California- Berkeley	2012 "Bright Futures in Malawi's New Dawn: Educational Aspirations as Assertions of Identity." Forthcoming in American Journal of Sociology.
2011	Álvaro Santana Acuña	Harvard University	, "How a Literature Book Becomes a Classic: The Case of García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude"
2010	Jeremy Schulz,	University of California - Berkely.	"The Social and Cultural Construction of the Work-Private Life Boundry in Three Countries: A Comparative Study of the Evening Hours in the Lives of French, Norwegian and American Business Professionals."
2009	Michael Strand	Notre Dame	“Institutional Change as a Field Process: The Transformation of American Psychiatry, 1945-1980.”
2008	Erin Metz McDonnell	Northwestern University	“Budgetary Units: A Weberian Approach to Consumption”
2007	William Wood	Boston College	“(Virtual) Myths,” Critical Sociology, Vol 30, No 4 (July 2004)
2006
2005	Daniel E. Adkins	University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
2004	Scott Washington	Princeton University	“Principles of Racial Taxonomy”
2003	Erika Summers-Effler	University of Pennsylvania	“The Micro Potential for Social Change: Emotion, Consciousness, and Social Movement Formation”
2002	Adam Isiah Green	New York University	“Gay But Not Queer: Toward a Post-Queer Study of Sexuality”
2001	Christopher Stevens	University of Virginia	“The Predictable Nature of the Balinese Cockfight”
2000	Alison Bianchi	Stanford University	“Sentiment and Status Process: A Test Between the Constitutive and Mediator Models”
1999	Eric M. Klinenberg	University of California, Berkeley	“Denaturalizing Disaster: A Social Autopsy of the 1995 Chicago Heat Wave”
1998	Wayne Brekhus	Rutgers University	“A Sociology of the Unmarked: Redirecting our Focus”
1997	Ivan Ermakoff	University of Chicago	“Aristocratic Marriages and Canon Law Prohibitions: Shifts in Norms and Patterns of Domination in the Central Middle Ages”
1996	Timothy James Berard	Boston University	“Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, and the Reformulation of Social Theory”

Lewis A Coser Award for Theoretical Agenda-Setting
Award established in 1996.

YEAR	NAME	AFFILIATION AT TIME OF AWARD
2011	Philip Gorski	Yale University