Tilly Prize Awards for 2009
As a committee, we received many remarkable articles. They testify to the excellence of graduate student work and bode well for the future of SSHA.
In this inaugural year, we awarded a dual prize. We found two, very different, articles equally meritorious.
Stefan Bargheer (University of Chicago)
“Taxonomic Morality: Alfred C. Kinsey and the Natural History of Survey Research”
Stefan Bargheer explores the work of Kinsey as a case study on the taxonomic method in both biology and sociology. The ‘logic of collecting’ that informed Kinsey’s work on gall wasps and sexual behavior, he argues, was not statistical. Its normative presuppositions were different, and that played out in the politics of its reception. This is a strikingly original paper that combines analysis of biography, varied texts, historical trajectory and scholarly debate to raise large and significant questions about the developmental history and limits of current social scientific methodology.
Sadia Saeed (University of Michigan)
“Rethinking State Autonomy: Citizenship, Community and State in Pakistan”
Sadia’s Saeed’s fascinating empirical study of Muslim citizenship with respect to the Ahmadiyya community in Pakistan analyzes the registers of causality -- territorial, coercive, bureaucratic, juridical, and regulative - in state exclusionary processes and citizenship regimes. With an eye to the historical interactions of elected officials, the judiciary, and state bureaucrats, she critically assesses the existing literature on cultural theories of state formation, and makes a compelling case for the operation of multiple logics of state action and exclusion. Her blockbuster original interview materials were the icing on the cake.
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