Annual prize given by the African Studies Association
The ASA Best Book Prize, formerly known as the Herskovits Prize (Melville J. Herskovits Prize), is an annual prize given by the
African Studies Association to the best scholarly work (including translations) on
Africa published in
English in the previous year and distributed in the
United States. The prize was named after
Melville Herskovits, one of the founders of the ASA. The title of the prize was changed in 2019 in response to efforts to decolonize African studies.[1]
Winners
1965 –
Ruth S. Morgenthau for Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa
1985 –
Claire C. Robertson for Sharing the Same Bowl: A Socioeconomic History of Women and Class in Accra, Ghana
1986 –
Sara Berry for Fathers Work for Their Sons: Accumulation, Mobility, and Class Formation in an Extended Yoruba Community
1987 –
Paul Lubeck for Islam and Urban Labor in Northern Nigeria: The Making of a Muslim Working Class
1987 –
T.O. Beidelman for Moral Imagination in Kaguru Modes of Thought
1988 –
John Iliffe for The African Poor: A History
1989 –
Joseph Calder Miller for Way Of Death: Merchant Capitalism And The Angolan Slave Trade, 1730-1830
1989 –
V. Y. Mudimbe for The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge
1990 –
Edwin N. Wilmsen for Land Filled with Flies: A Political Economy of the Kalahari
1991 –
Johannes Fabian for Power and Performance: Ethnographic Explorations Through Proverbial Wisdom and Theater in Shaba, Zaire
1991 –
Luise White for The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi
1992 –
Myron Echenberg for Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Senegalais in French West Africa, 1857-1960
1993 –
Kwame Anthony Appiah for In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture
1994 –
Keletso E. Atkins for The Moon is Dead! Give Us Our Money!: The Cultural Origins of an African Work Ethic, atal, South Africa, 1843-1900
1995 –
Megan Vaughan,
Henrietta L. Moore for Cutting Down Trees: Gender, Nutrition, and Agricultural Change in the Northern Province of Zambia, 1890-1990
1996 –
Jonathon Glassman for Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion, & Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856-1888