Markofski, Wes. 2015. New Monasticism and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism. New York: Oxford University Press.

For most of the last century, popular and scholarly common sense has equated American evangelicalism with across-the-board social, economic, and political conservatism. However, if a growing chorus of evangelical leaders, media pundits, and religious scholars is to be believed, the era of uncontested evangelical conservatism is on the brink of collapse – if it hasn’t collapsed already. Combining vivid ethnographic storytelling and incisive theoretical analysis, New Monasticism and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism introduces readers to the fascinating and unexplored terrain of neo-monastic evangelicalism. Often located in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods, new monastic communities pursue religiously inspired visions of racial, social, and economic justice-alongside personal spiritual transformation-through diverse and creative expressions of radical community.

Elisabeth Anderson and Barry Eidlin are pleased to announce Revisiting Remaking Modernity: New Voices in Comparative-Historical Sociology, a mini-conference sponsored by the ASA Comparative-Historical Section, the Northwestern University Department of Sociology, and the Buffett Institute for Global Studies at Northwestern University. The conference will be held at Northwestern University on August 21 from 9am-6:30 pm.

Ten years after the publication of the landmark edited volume Remaking Modernity (Duke 2005), the time is ripe to take stock of comparative-historical sociology’s past, present and future. The conference will open with a plenary panel featuring the book’s editors (Julia Adams, Elisabeth Clemens, and Ann Shola Orloff) in conversation with scholars in the early stages of their careers (Robert Braun, Marcus Hunter, and Catherine Lee).

The summer edition of the newsletter is in preparation. If you have published an article or book that you would like to publicize to section members, please send your news to Benjamin Lind at lind.benjamin@gmail.com

We have an impressive line-up of political sociology panels and roundtables at this year’s ASA meetings in Chicago. Look for our section events on SATURDAY, August 24.

The section reception is organized jointly with Economic Sociology section, and will be held in the Hilton on MONDAY, August 24. Note that the incorrect date was listed in the preliminary online program and in Footnotes. The correct time and place will be listed in the conference program.

2014 was a great year in political sociology.

The Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship (Book) Award will be awarded jointly to two books:

David Scott Fitzgerald and David Cook-Martín, Culling the Masses: The Democratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policy in the Americas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014) and Mara Loveman, National Colors: Racial Classification and the State in Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014)

The Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship (article) Award will be awarded to Malcolm Fairbrother, University of Bristol, for “Economists, Capitalists, and the Making of Globalization: North American Free Trade in Comparative-Historical Perspective,” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 119, no. 5, with an honorable mention to Delia Baldassarri and Amir Goldberg for their article “Neither Ideologues nor Agnostics: Alternative Voters’ Belief System in an Age of Partisan Politics,” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 120, no. 1.