What EMCA Rewards: Reading the ASA Awards as a Theory Text by Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D.
What EMCA Rewards
Reading the ASA Awards as a Theory Text
Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D.
January 2026
Award lists are never mere bureaucratic artifacts. They constitute how a field remembers itself, narrates excellence, and morally instructs its future practitioners. The American Sociological Association's Section on Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis maintains five distinct honors: the Best Book Award, Best Paper Award, Garfinkel-Sacks Award for Distinguished Scholarship, Graduate Student Paper Award, and Melvin Pollner Prize in Ethnomethodology. Examined collectively, these awards reveal a discipline that has traveled from marginal insurgency to established intellectual tradition while maintaining its distinctive analytical commitments—and increasingly, its moral seriousness about power, inequality, and justice.
Institutionalization Without Domestication
The existence of regular, named awards signals EMCA's successful professionalization: stable governance infrastructure within ASA, a recognized canon, and continuity of community practice. The Garfinkel-Sacks Distinguished Scholarship Award especially performs the work of founding myth maintenance, naming heirs to the tradition and narrating intellectual lineage from Harold Garfinkel's UCLA seminars through the present.
Yet note the temporal rhythm of these honors. Awards frequently lag years behind publication—Gail Jefferson's posthumous recognition for Talking About Troubles in Conversation (2017 award for 2015 book), Charles Goodwin's Cooperative Action (2019 award for 2017 work). This reflects EMCA's distinctive ethos: the field values depth, durability, and craft over trendiness. There is no industrial churn here, no frantic cycling through methodological fashions. Work must prove its staying power before receiving the highest recognition.
Santa Barbara as Living Center
UC Santa Barbara's presence across these award categories is unmistakable. The 2024 Best Paper went to Geoffrey Raymond, Jie Chen, and Kevin Whitehead for their analysis of sequential standoffs in police encounters. Jason Turowetz appears twice: first winning the Graduate Student Award in 2016 for work on autism diagnosis (while completing his PhD at Wisconsin-Madison), then sharing the 2025 Best Book Award (with Matthew Hollander) for Morality in the Making of Sense and Self. The Garfinkel-Sacks lifetime achievement roster includes Don Zimmerman (2013) and Gene Lerner (2019). Graduate students from Santa Barbara appear repeatedly: Kevin Whitehead (2007), André Buscariolli (2025).
This concentration is not accidental nostalgia. Santa Barbara remains a living productive center of innovation, particularly around questions of moral order, policing, institutional encounters, race and inequality, and accountability. The intellectual lineage from Harvey Sacks (who taught at UCLA and UC Irvine until his death in 1975) through Schegloff, Garfinkel, and Zimmerman to contemporary UCSB faculty demonstrates continuous generative capacity rather than mere heritage preservation.
Yet EMCA is emphatically not a California monopoly. The UK maintains strong representation through Paul Drew (York), Wes Sharrock (Manchester), and Button and Coopmans. European scholarship flourishes: Nishizaka from Chiba, Hoeppe from Germany, Benjamin from Groningen, Dupret's Islamic law studies. Joonas Råman's 2020 Graduate Student Award for work on budo demonstrations signals Nordic momentum. And UCLA has produced major figures including Chase Wesley Raymond (who earned dual PhDs in Hispanic Linguistics and Sociology there before moving to Colorado) and numerous other graduate student award winners. Santa Barbara functions as a central node in a global network, not an imperial center demanding tribute.
Respecifying Big Concepts Through Situated Practice
Across all award categories, EMCA consistently rewards work that takes abstract concepts—morality, science, race, legality, authority, cognition—and respecifies them through careful attention to situated practice. This is the field's distinctive contribution: refusing abstract "Theory-about-stuff" in favor of demonstrating how social order gets built turn-by-turn, gesture-by-gesture, gaze-by-gaze, inside consequential institutional settings.
Consider the recent award cluster: Hollander and Turowetz's reanalysis of the Milgram experiments as moral interaction, Raymond's team on sequential power in police stops, Ziewitz on algorithmic accountability, Whitehead on everyday antiracism, Heritage on epistemics in action. Each takes a topic that could easily generate abstract theoretical pronouncements and instead shows precisely how that phenomenon operates through the organized details of interaction.
The Pollner Prize especially maintains EMCA's radical edge. Darin Weinberg's wins for Contemporary Social Constructionism and Of Others Inside demonstrate that ethnomethodology still studies how institutions colonize lived experience, not merely how people coordinate conversational turns. Michael Deland's prize for basketball disputing, David Gibson's for Cuban Missile Crisis deliberations, Janet Vertesi's for NASA organizational culture—each extends ethnomethodological inquiry into domains that matter beyond narrow professional boundaries.
Ethnomethodology Is Not Dead
Anyone who claims ethnomethodology has been overshadowed by conversation analysis has not read these lists carefully. Kenneth Liberman won the Best Book Award twice in a decade (2015, 2023), capping his recognition with the 2025 Garfinkel-Sacks Award—acknowledgment of his distinctive phenomenological approach to objectivity and practical reason. The Pollner Prize consistently honors work blending ethnomethodological sensibilities with law, organizations, religion, cognition, and public life.
Anne Warfield Rawls received the 2024 Garfinkel-Sacks Award, recognizing her decades of work explicating Garfinkel's theoretical foundations and their implications for understanding race, trust, and institutional order. Michael Lynch (2020) and Douglas Maynard (2021) represent scholars who have consistently bridged technical conversation analysis with broader ethnomethodological concerns about knowledge production and diagnostic reasoning.
The field maintains productive tension between its conversation-analytic and ethnomethodological wings rather than allowing either to dominate. This is intellectually healthy: pure CA risks becoming mere cataloguing of conversational mechanics, while EM without the disciplined empirical orientation CA provides risks floating into phenomenological abstraction.
The Turn Toward Moral and Political Stakes
Earlier EMCA awards primarily rewarded technical elegance of analysis—the beautiful demonstration of how repair sequences work, how turn-taking gets managed, how institutional categories get applied. Recent awards increasingly reward work addressing police accountability, racial inequality, patient agency, democratic deliberation, institutional injustice, and power under everyday conditions.
Key signals: Whitehead's 2018 prize for "Everyday Antiracism in Action," analyzing preference organization in responses to racism. Ziewitz's 2020 recognition for algorithmic accountability. Raymond's team winning 2024 for police encounter analysis. Multiple awards in medical and health justice contexts, from oncology recommendations to pain recognition in primary care. Growing attention to religion and cultural diversity through Chalfoun's work on biblical authority and Dupret's Islamic law studies.
This trajectory confirms that EMCA has moved decisively toward questions of injustice, inequality, domination, and resistance—but crucially, without abandoning its methodological rigor. The field increasingly practices what might be called critical interactionism: technical sophistication married to moral imagination and political seriousness. Power is studied in the turn. Injustice is examined in the sequence. The micro-machinery of domination and resistance becomes visible through detailed empirical analysis.
Graduate Student Awards: The Future Being Born
Graduate student awards function as the field's crystal ball, revealing where energy and innovation concentrate. What are the rising generation doing? They are deeply empirical and institutionally grounded, less interested in conversational trivia for its own sake, more focused on human stakes. Dominant themes include policing and law, religion, autism and diagnosis, children and learning, embodiment, epistemics and credibility, race, disability, and socialization.
Institutionally, UCSB and UCLA continue dominating the pipeline, but Chicago, Groningen, Max Planck Institute, and Wisconsin-Madison have emerged as serious players. International diversification is real and accelerating. The pattern suggests the next generation is technically skilled, publicly relevant, ethically attuned, and globally distributed. The tradition appears safe in their hands.
Jason Turowetz's trajectory exemplifies the career pipeline: Graduate Student Award in 2016 (for work completed at Wisconsin-Madison under Douglas Maynard's mentorship), then co-winning the Best Book Award in 2025 and the Pollner Prize in 2024. Both projects address how moral accountability operates through diagnostic practices—showing how sustained engagement with consequential institutional domains can develop over a career. Turowetz now teaches at UCSB, completing a geographical arc that links Wisconsin's strong tradition to California's continuing prominence.
What These Awards Do Not Show
Any canon also excludes, and these exclusions illuminate opportunities. Notably underrepresented: Latin America, Africa, and the Indian subcontinent. Working-class field sites beyond institutional encounters. Digital everyday life compared to institutional digitality. LGBTQ interaction work appears almost absent. Homelessness, poverty, and welfare systems remain territories awaiting fuller exploration. Relatively few awards recognize pure CA mechanics divorced from institutional stakes, few address media interaction, almost none address leisure beyond sports and gaming. Explicitly feminist work is rare, though gender operates as background throughout.
These gaps are not criticisms but diagnoses of openings—territories where the next generation might make distinctive contributions by bringing EMCA's analytical tools to bear on understudied domains.
A Garfinkelian Moral Sociology
Read as narrative, these awards position EMCA as a discipline of moral seriousness: defending rigor against theoretical abstraction, obsessed with accountability, rooted in institutions, allergic to speculation, global but lineage-conscious, and still profoundly shaped by Mel Pollner's spirit of critical inquiry.
More controversially, the awards implicitly argue that EMCA has become one of the central moral sociologies of our time. Not Arendtian reflection on political evil. Not Durkheimian concern with collective conscience. Not Bourdieusian analysis of symbolic violence. Not Foucaultian genealogy of power/knowledge. Rather, a Garfinkelian moral sociology where order, injustice, harm, domination, and resistance are practices—observable, analyzable, consequential practices accomplished through the mundane machinery of human interaction.
The social world revealed through these awarded works is fragile, accountable, and never guaranteed. It must be built and rebuilt, turn by turn, in every encounter. EMCA remains one of the few intellectual traditions stubborn enough to keep watching closely, documenting precisely how that building happens—and increasingly, how it fails, who gets harmed, and what resistance looks like when it emerges from the details of everyday life.
These lists are not trivia. They are how a field remembers itself and instructs its future.
______________________________________________________________________________
The Section on Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis’ Best Book Award
2025: Matthew M. Hollander, Marion Technical College, and Jason Turowetz, University of California, Santa Barbara, Morality in the Making of Sense and Self: Stanley Milgram’s Obedience Experiments and the New Science of Morality. Oxford University Press, 2023.
2023: Kenneth Liberman, University of Oregon, Tasting Coffee: An Inquiry into Objectivity. SUNY Press. 2022.
2021: Angela Cora Garcia, How Mediation Works, Cambridge University Press. 2019.
2021 Honorable mention: Janet Vertesi, Shaping Science, University of Chicago Press. 2020
2019: Charles Goodwin, Cooperative Action. Cambridge University Press. 2017.
2017: Gail Jefferson, Talking about Troubles in Conversation. Oxford University Press. 2015.
2015: Ken Liberman, More Studies in Ethnomethodology. State University of New York Press. 2013.
2013: Morana Alac, Handling Digital Brains. A Laboratory Study of Multimodal Semiotic Interaction in the Age of Computers. MIT Press. 2011.
2011: Mychael Lynch, Simon A. Cole, Ruth McNally, and Kathleen Jordan, Truth machine: The contentious history of DNA fingerprinting. University of Chicago Press. 2008.
2009: Eric Livingston, Ethnographies of Reason. Ashgate. 2008.
2007: Hedwig te Molder and Jonathan Potter, Conversation and Cognition. Cambridge University Press. 2005.
The Section on Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis’ Best Paper Award
2024: Geoffrey Raymond, Jie Chen, and Kevin Whitehead, University of California, Santa Barbara, “Sequential Standoffs in Police Encounters with the Public.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 42(5-6), 653-678. 2023.
2022: Patrick Watson, Wilfrid Laurier University, “Gestalt contexture and contested motives: Understanding video evidence in the murder trial of Officer Michael Slager.” Theoretical Criminology. 2022.
2020: Malte Ziewitz, “A Not Quite Random Walk: Experimenting with the Ethnomethods of the Algorithm” Big Data & Society, 4(2). 2017.
2018: Kevin A. Whitehead, “Everyday Antiracism in Action: Preference Organization in Responses to Racism,” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 34(4):374-389. 2015.
2018: Edward Reynolds, “Description of Membership and Enacting Membership: Seeing-a-lift, Being a Team,” Journal of Pragmatics 118:99-119. 2017.
2016: Catelijne Coopmans and Graham Button, “Eyeballing Expertise,” Social Studies of Science 44(5):758-785. 2014.
2014: Christian Greiffenhagen, University of Loughborough, and Wes Sharrock, University of Manchester, “Does Mathematics Look Certain in the Front, But Fallible in the Back?” Social Studies of Science 41(6):839-866. 2011.
2012: John Heritage, University of California, Los Angeles, “Epistemics in Action: Action Formation and Territories of Knowledge,” Research on Language and Social Interaction 45(1):1–29. 2012.
2010: Rod Watson, “Constitutive Practices and Garfinkel’s Notion of Trust: Revisited,” Journal of Classical Sociology 9(4):475-499. 2009.
2008: Baudouin Dupret, “What is Islamic Law? A Praxiological Answer and an Egyptian Case Study,” Theory, Culture & Society 24(2):79-100. 2007.
The Section on Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis’ Garfinkel-Sacks Award for Distinguished Scholarship
2025: Kenneth Liberman, University of Oregon
2024: Anne Warfield Rawls, Bentley University
2023: Paul Drew, University of York
2022: Aug Nishizaka, Chiba University
2021: Douglas Maynard, University of Wisconsin-Madison
2020: Michael Lynch, Cornell University
2019: Gene Lerner, University of California, Santa Barbara
2018: Charles Goodwin, University of California, Los Angeles
2017: Anita Pomerantz, University at Albany, New York
2016: John Heritage, University of California, Los Angeles
2015: Jeff Coulter, Boston University
2013: Don Zimmerman, University of California, Santa Barbara
2011: Wes Sharrock, University of Manchester
2010: Emanuel A. Schegloff, University of California, Los Angeles
2009: George Psathas, Boston University
2007: Harold Garfinkel, University of California, Los Angeles
The Section on Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis’ Graduate Student Paper Award
2025: André Buscariolli, University of California, Santa Barbara, “Managing Trouble Along a Continuum of Accountability: On Police Practices for Dealing with Less-Than-Competent Subjects.” British Journal of Criminology, 65(1), 54-74. 2024.
2024: Andrew Chalfoun, University of California, Los Angeles, “Biblical Authority in Interaction: How Do Evangelicals Use the Bible?” Journal of Pragmatics, Vol. 208, 19-32. 2023.
2023: Yuchen Yang, University of Chicago, “Gender Uptake: Theorizing the Semiotics of Doing and Undoing Gender.”
2022: Kristella Montiegel, University of California, Los Angeles, “Peer Socialization in an Oral Preschool Classroom.”
2021: Reihaneh Afshari Saleh, “Mock Aggression: Navigating Affiliation and Disaffiliation in Interaction,” Research on Language and Social Interaction, 53(4), 481-499. 2020.
2021 Honorable Mention: Kristella Montiegel, “Other-Initiated Repair and Preference Principles in an Oral Classroom for Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing Preschoolers,” Journal of Pragmatics, 178, 108-120. 2021.
2020: Joonas Råman, “Budo Demonstrations as Shared Accomplishments: The modalities of guiding in the joint teaching of physical skills”, Journal of Pragmatics, 150: 17-38. 2019.
2019: Alexandra Tate, “Treatment Recommendations in Oncology Visits: Implications for Patient Agency and Physician Authority,” Health Communication 33(12):1-11. 2018.
2018: Amanda McArthur, University of California, Los Angeles, “Getting Pain on the Table in Primary Care Physical Exams,” Social Science and Medicine 200:190-198. 2018.
2017: Matina Kolanoski, Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin Goethe-Universität, Institut für Soziologie, “Undoing the Legal Capacities of a Military Object: A Case Study on the (In)Visibility of Civilians,” Law & Social Inquiry (online). 2017.
2016: Jason Turowetz, “Citing Conduct, Individualizing Symptoms: Accomplishing Autism Diagnosis in Clinical Case Conferences,” Social Science & Medicine 142:214-222. 2015.
2015: Elliott Hoey, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguists, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, “Lapse Management and Lapse Resolution in Incipient and Sustained States of Talk”
2014: Clara Bergen, University of California, Los Angeles, “Doing Make-Believe: Embodied Action in Children’s Imaginary Character Play”
2013: Chase Wesley Raymond and Anne Elizabeth Clark White, “A Taxonomy of Time Reference in Interaction,” Communication Monographs 81(2):208-238. 2014.
2012: Trevor Benjamin, Center for Language and Cognition, University of Groningen, the Netherlands, “When Problems Pass Us By: Using “You Mean” to Help Locate the Source of Trouble,” Research on Language and Social Interaction 45(1):82-109. 2012.
2011: Edward Reynolds, The University of Queensland, “Epistemics in Conflict: Enticing a Challengeable in Protest Arguments”
2010: Kobin Kendrick, University of California, Santa Barbara, “Evidental Vindication in Next Turn: Using the Retrospective ‘See?’ in Conversation”
2009: Kaoru Hayano, “Generalization and Specification of the Scope of Assessment: Negotiations of Epistemic Stance in Japanese Talk-in-Interaction”
2008: Christopher Koenig, University of California, Los Angeles, “(Re)Formulating Prescription Medication in Acute Primary Care”
2007: Kevin A. Whitehead, University of California, Santa Barbara, “The Use, Management, and Reproduction of Racial Commonsense in Interaction”
The Section on Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis’ Melvin Pollner Prize in Ethnomethodology
2024: Douglas W. Maynard, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Jason Turowetz, University of California, Santa Barbara, Autistic Intelligence: Interaction, Individuality, and the Challenges of Diagnosis. University of Chicago Press. 2022.
2022: Janet Vertesi, Princeton University, Shaping Science: Organizations, Decisions, and Culture on NASA’s Teams. University of Chicago Press. 2020.
2020: R.J. Anderson and W. W. Sharrock, Action at a Distance: Studies in the Practicalities of Executive Management. London and New York: Routledge. 2018.
2018: Darin Weinberg, Contemporary Social Constructionism: Key Themes. Temple University Press. 2014.
2017: Götz Hoeppe, “Working Data Together: The Accountability and Reflexivity of Digital Astronomical Practice,” Social Studies of Science 44: 243-270. 2014.
2016: Michael Deland, “Basketball in the Key of Law: The Significance of Disputing in Pick-Up Basketball,” Law & Society Review 47(3):653-85. 2013.
2013: David Gibson, Talk at the Brink: Deliberation and Decision during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Princeton University Press. 2012.
2011: Darin Weinberg, Of Others Inside: Insanity, Addiction And Belonging in America. Temple University Press. 2005.
2009: Pollner Award Fund Established
Comments
Post a Comment