Announcing the

2015 C. Wright Mills Award Finalists

(in alphabetical order)

Waverly Duck, No Way Out: Precarious Living in the Shadow of Poverty and Drug Dealing, University of Chicago Press

Patricia Fernández-Kelly, The Hero’s Fight: African Americans in West Baltimore and the Shadow of the State, Princeton University Press

Kelly Ray Knight, addicted. pregnant. poor, Duke University Press

Sharmila Rudrappa, Discounted Life: The Price of Global Surrogacy in India, NYU Press

Carla Shedd, Unequal City: Race, Schools, and Perceptions of Injustice, Russell Sage Foundation 

The C. Wright Mills Award will be presented on
Saturday, August 22 at the Awards Ceremony.

The committee reviewed 63 nominated books to select the six finalists. The committee will select the final winner prior to the Annual Meeting and announce the winner at the Awards Ceremony in Chicago, IL. All finalists’ books will be recognized in the 2015 Annual Conference program and at the ceremony.

To an outstanding degree, each of the finalists met the criteria for the award:

• Critically addresses an issue of contemporary public importance.
• Brings to the topic a fresh, imaginative perspective.
• Advances social scientific understanding of the topic.
• Displays a theoretically informed view and empirical orientation.
• Evinces quality in style of writing.
• Explicitly or implicitly contains implications for courses of action. 

C. WRIGHT MILLS AWARD COMMITTEE 

Victor Rios, Chair, University of California, Santa Barbara

David G. Embrick, Chair-Elect, Loyola University Chicago

Leon Anderson, Utah State University

Rodney D. Coates, Miami University of Ohio

Reza Hasmath, University of Alberta

Marina Karides, University of Hawai'i at Hilo

Rhacel Parrenas, University of Southern California