2011 Recipient

The 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.

Winner: Kristen Ghodsee
Title: Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Transformation of Islam in Postsocialist Bulgaria (Princeton University Press)

Kristen Ghodsee’s Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Transformation of Islam in Postsocialist Bulgaria is a sophisticated, nuanced analysis of shifting identities in post-socialist eastern Europe. Focusing on the Pomaks in a former mining town in southern Bulgaria, she argues that the rise of a more “orthodox” Islamic identity in Bulgaria is driven by a mixture of international factors and the local socioeconomic context. As result of these factors, Islamist institutions have become a viable substitute for both workplace and social supports that were damaged by the end of socialism, providing jobs, focus and community. Drawing on a wide range of evidence including ethnographic studies, evaluations of the use of public spaces, and analyses of economic conditions and religious publications, Ghodsee has written an exceptional book that makes an important contribution to our field and is relevant for a broad community of scholars.

Honorable Mention: Sarah Phillips