Dr Kristin Plys Receives Two ASA Awards

July 28, 2023 by Shreeya Lamba

Congratulations to Assistant Professor Kristin Plys for winning the Marxist Sociology Teaching and Praxis Award as well as an honourable mention for the PEWS Immanuel Wallerstein Memorial Book Award, both from the American Sociological Association (ASA).

Plys won the Marxist Sociology Award with the award committee praising her approach to pedagogy and engagement in public sociology. The committee also stated that Plys’ scholarship is “post-disciplinary, decolonizing, and directly challenging numerous traditional/modern social sciences and humanities approaches and assumptions.” Plys, who teaches Sociology at UTM, brings together her research, teaching, and praxis with a focus on the intersection of Marxism and post-colonialism. 

Plys’ book, which received the honourable mention for the PEWS Immanuel Wallerstein Memorial Book Award, is titled Capitalism and its Uncertain Future. It was written with Charles Lemert and it combines social theories of capitalism with Plys’ research on Pakistan’s cultural resistance to military dictatorship.  PEWS, which stands for Political Economy of the World System, is a section of the ASA which focuses on the study of the global capitalist socio-economic structure with an emphasis on anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, and decolonization frameworks. The PEWS book award honours American Sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein and aims to highlight works that explore his world-systems approach to sociology. Plys’ Capitalism and its Uncertain Future explores anti-authoritarianism in Global South cultures.

To learn more about the awards, visit the ASA Marxist Sociology Award page and the PEWS Award page. To learn more about Plys’ book, visit the publisher’s website