Charles Tilly wins Albert O. Hirschman Prize

17 April 2008, 1531 EDT

Charles Tilly has won the 2008 Albert O. Hirschman Prize.

“Charles Tilly is one of the most distinguished of all contemporary social scientists,” said Craig Calhoun, president of the SSRC. “He is the most influential analyst of social movements and contentious politics, a pathbreaker in the historical sociology of the state, a pivotal theorist of social inequality. Among the most eminent of sociologists, he is also a leading voice in history and political science and has played a hugely important role in integrating these fields. His 1975 book, The Formation of National States in Western Europe, capped a major SSRC project on comparative politics. Since then, he has gone on to be the leading voice in the historical social science that project helped to create.”

Tilly was the choice of a selection committee chaired by Albert Fishlow, a former SSRC Board member and a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, where he also directs the Institute of Latin American Studies and the Center for the Study of Brazil. Serving along with Fishlow were Peter Gourevitch, a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, and Doug McAdam, a professor of sociology at Stanford University.

“We selected Charles Tilly as the recipient of the 2008 Albert Hirschman Prize in honor of his extensive career spanning the social sciences,” said Fishlow. “Through extraordinary and numerous scholarly contributions, he has pioneered research into a whole array of fields fundamental to the process of economic development over centuries. Tilly, like Hirschman, is an exceptional scholar.”

“I am a long-time admirer of Albert Hirschman which makes this a great honor,” said Tilly upon learning of the committee’s decision.

In the world of academia, the news of Tilly’s award has been greeted with interest and applause.

One of many reasons to watch the interview I posted about earlier.

More later.

Dan Nexon

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.