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and Eurasian Studies

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Home >> ASEEES Prizes >> Davis Center Book Prize in Political and Social Studies

The ASEEES Davis Center Book Prize in Political and Social Studies, established in 2008 and sponsored by the Kathryn W. and Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, is awarded annually for an outstanding monograph published on Russia, Eurasia, or Eastern Europe in anthropology, political science, sociology, or geography in the previous calendar year.

Winners of the Davis Center Book Prize:

2011
Winner: Kristen Ghodsee, Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Transformation of Islam in Postsocialist Bulgaria(Princeton University Press)
 
Honorable Mention: Sarah Phillips, Disability and Mobile Citizenship in Postsocialist Ukraine(Indiana University Press)
2010
Winner: Olga Shevchenko, Crisis and the Everyday in Post-Socialist Moscow (Indiana University Press)

Olga Shevchenko's study of contemporary life in Moscow provides an excellent balance of rich ethnographic research, an insightful theoretical framework, and engaging writing. She integrates many different aspects of urban life during this period, and offers the kind of ethnographic breadth and depth that is difficult to achieve in urban ethnographies. Her identification of "total crisis" as the defining feature of post-socialist life structures a fascinating analysis of the seemingly contradictory narratives and choices of the people she portrays through lively descriptions and skillful incorporation of different modes of research. Shevchenko invites the reader into everyday life in Moscow and offers insights into how people navigate the complicated world in which extended crisis becomes lived reality.

Honorable Mentions:
  • Bruce Grant, The Captive and the Gift: Cultural Histories of Sovereignty in Russia and the Caucasus (Cornell University Press) —— Bruce Grant crafts a smart and unique take on the complex and acrimonious relationship between Russia and the Caucasus. It is an issue of historic and contemporary importance, which Grant illuminates in this highly original case study, drawn from multi-media and interview sources and embedded in a rich intellectual discussion. It is a marvelously written and lyrical book.
  • Douglas Rogers, The Old Faith and the Russian Land: A Historical Ethnography of Ethics in the Urals (Cornell University Press) —— Rogers shows that there is still considerable value in a village ethnography. The focus on ethical systems and their effects on the management of human capital is a valuable addition to the anthropology of post-socialism. It is especially noteworthy for the attention it brings to communities like Sepych, whose experiences and internal logic often contrast sharply with the visions and goals of policy-makers. The study is enriched by combining a historical approach with contemporary ethnographic research.
2009
Winner: Jessica Allina-Pisano, The Post-Soviet Potemkin Village: Politics and Property Rights in the Black Earth (Cambridge University Press)

Allina-Pisano's monograph reveals how private property reforms introduced into post-Soviet rural communities, long-organized along notions of collective ownership, led to impoverishment instead of prosperity. She deals with a complex of structural, cultural, and historical mechanisms that contribute to current rural conditions, and does so subtly, smartly, and with compelling style and grace. By uncovering the informal social constraints on formal economic rights, Allina-Pisano explains the transformation of state socialism's former collective farmers into monopoly capitalism's new rural proletarians. Her project is especially noteworthy for the extensive and intensive field work, conducted in rural villages in Ukraine and Russia. Meticulously building from the ground up, Allina-Pisano demonstrates that a well-constructed local ethnography offers invaluable insight into the unanticipated outcomes of post-communist economic reform.

Honorable Mentions:
  • Scott Gehlbach, Representation through Taxation: Revenue, Politics, and Development in Postcommunist States (Cambridge University Press)——Gehlbach has produced a first-rate monograph on the emergence of variant tax systems among the post-communist states of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He successfully challenges the long-held conventional wisdom in American political science that organized interests will be better represented in the halls of political power than will unorganized interests. Instead, Gehlbach shows how the state's delivery of public goods had less to so with the organization of wealth, and more to do with its accessibility. His findings are enhanced by a mixed research methodology, combining game theory and statistical analysis with field work and contextual framing. Gehlbach's monograph is a major contribution to the post-communist political economy.
  • Charles King, The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus (Oxford University Press)——Ghost of Freedom is very clearly driven by a social science question: what forces account for the bellicosity of Caucasus social history. It is a history only in the sense that it interrogates a broad sweep of time and is chronologically structured, but if one looks closely, almost every aspect of the book, every chapter, every historical anecdote, is in some way connected to the overarching problematics of colonial rule, politics, and strategic cooptation, struggles for independence and control of resources (political, social, geographic, and material), and the impossibly intricate interrelationships between communities, identities, and interests across the region, making it a work of politics in historic mode. The real accomplishment of this book is the way in which King consistently undermines a number of essentializing modes of explaining the Caucasus.
2008
Winner: Philip G. Roeder, Where Nation-States Come From: Institutional Change in the Age of Nationalism (Princeton University Press)

A political scientist, Roeder’s ambitious study asks why there are less than 200 nation-states in the world today, even though there have been more than 800 active nation-state projects. Drawing on the Soviet and post-Soviet experience, Roeder’s political institutional explanation is straightforward, original and convincingly argued on the basis of extensive historical analysis. This is comparative, multi-method research at its best, and a significant contribution to theories of the nation-state and conflicts over nation-states in the Soviet and post-Soviet world.

Honorable Mentions:
  • Zsuzsa Gille, From the Cult of Waste to the Trash Heap of History (Indiana University Press)——A sociologist, Gille employs "thick description" to explain changing rationalizations, ideologies, and unintended consequences of industrial waste under state socialism and capitalism in Hungary. The book provides an original analysis and compelling case study, which poses intriguing questions about social conceptions of industrial practice and economic value.
  • Catherine Wanner, Communities of the Converted: Ukrainians and Global Evangelism (Cornell University Press)——An anthropologist, Wanner provides an expertly crafted and elegantly written study of the resurgence of evangelical Protestantism in Ukraine. Based on exemplary multi-sited ethnographic research in both the US and Ukraine, the book combines thoughtful and thorough historical contextualization with extended forays into the evangelical worlds and shows the processes through which international movements were able to establish a presence in disenfranchised communities as well as what they contributed to those communities.