Political Sociology Best Article or Chapter, 2006

Award Committee: Barb Brents (chair), Nicola Beisel, Donald W. Light, Tim Bartley

Co-Winner: Douglas Hartmann and Joseph Gerteis, “Dealing with Diversity: Mapping Multiculturalism in Sociological Terms.” Sociological Theory 23(2):218-240, June, 2005.

The Hartmann and Gerteis paper is a very important paper for thinking about the scholarly literature on immigration and multiculturalism and the current political debate about immigration. By disentangling the cultural and social basis of social cohesion, Hartmann and Gerteis have used the immigration debate to speak to the central issue in sociology - what a society is and what holds it together. This paper provides an extraordinarily well worked out set of dimensions and distinctions that organize and clarify the whole field of multiculturalism. Their model allows researchers or interest groups to move beyond discussions about which kind of multiculturalism is more "progressive" to what are the cultural and structural trade offs.

Co-Winner: Monica Prasad, “Why is France So French? Culture, Institutions and Neoliberalism, 1974-1981.” American Journal of Sociology 11(2): 357-407, September 2005.

Prasad's article is an impressive piece of scholarship and well written. It demonstrates that explaining the "decline of the state" and the rise of neoliberalism does not have to mean getting rid of state-centered theoretical approaches. In fact,the paper provides a nice illustration of what Saskia Sassen has called the state "incorporating the global project of its own shrinking role." It develops a careful analysis of how the character of French political institutions (as contrasted with the U.S.) shaped policy innovation. The paper also that instead of state fragmentation only producing veto points that stifle policy change, fragmentation can also produce a particular style of innovation led by upstart policy entrepreneurs. Finally, her point that early points of innovation may be as important as later points of "lock-in" furthers ideas about path dependence in a way that increases the tools political sociologists have for making sense of how history matters.