The Charles Taylor Book Award
Best Book in Political Science Employing or Developing Interpretive Methodologies & Methods
Modernity looks different after reading Subaltern Silence. Traditionally imagined as a project of liberation—underpinned by the rise of the free press and the growth of the public sphere—Olson’s analysis upends this understanding. His meticulous and self-reflexive archival work reveals how liberation and publicity have long been conjoined to domination and silence. A new dialectic of enlightenment emerges: not only reason but speech and discursive presence may shirk their liberatory promise. Through a deeply interpretive engagement with colonial and post-colonial archives—especially those surrounding Haiti’s revolution and postcolonial trajectory—Olson investigates how subordination operates not only through literal voicelessness but through misrepresentation—a strategy that renders individuals unheard, devalued, and erased. The book invites readers and researchers to think about and study voices that are absent in the archives, challenging us to confront how history is told and who is left out. While firmly grounded in historical inquiry, Subaltern Silence resonates powerfully in the present. Its discussion of misrepresentation as a method of silencing remains urgent in light of ongoing struggles over voice, recognition, and power and is a valuable contribution to critical theory and political thought.
Born This Way invites readers to unpack what has become a widespread social “fact”: the belief that sexual and gender identities are biologically innate. Through careful historical analysis, Wuest reveals how this framework emerged in the 1950s and 1960s as LGBTQ+ activists turned to mental health professionals to challenge the pathologization of homosexuality, forging a path that intertwined identity claims with emerging scientific authority. Demonstrating how the scientization of sexuality can be a double-edged sword—enabling acceptance and alliance while also opening the door to politically dangerous forms of essentialism and scapegoating— Born This Way bridges the politics of identity and political economy, laying bare the ideological stakes of claiming biology as destiny.
The IMM Group gives the Charles Taylor Book Award annually to recognize the best book in political science that employs or develops interpretive methodologies and methods. Award winning books distinguish themselves as contributions to interpretivist thought in one or more of the following ways. First, they treat knowledge, including scientific knowledge, as historically situated and enmeshed in relationships of power. Second, they approach the world as socially made so that the categories, presuppositions, and classifications that refer to particular phenomena are understood to me manufactured rather than natural. Third, they eschew the individualist orientation that characterizes rational choice and behaviorist research, instead addressing how ideas, beliefs, values, and preferences are always embedded in a social world, which is constituted through humans' linguistic, affective, and practical relations with others.
Nominations are welcome from anyone. Authors may nominate their own work, as may readers and publishers. The nominated work may be either a single- or multi-authored book or an edited volume. To be eligible, books must have been published during the two-calendar-year period prior to the year of the APSA meeting, as determined by the printed book’s copyright date. A book that was nominated for the Charles Taylor Award during a year cannot be nominated again for the subsequent year’s Award. The award committee is under no obligation to make an award if submissions do not merit such recognition.
How to Nominate
Nominations for the 2025 Charles Taylor Book Award are currently open!
To be considered for the 2025 award, please do the following:
1. Mail one copy of the nominated book to each member of the award committee (listed below) so as to be received by March 30, 2025.
2. Email the committee chair Osman Balkan, obalkan@wharton.upenn.edu, notifying the committee of the nomination.
Members of the award committee for 2025 are:
Osman Balkan (chair), Huntsman Program in International Studies & Business, University of Pennsylvania
Mail to: 3732 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104
Becky Ploof, Institute of Political Science, Leiden University
Mail to: Wanningstraat 14C, 1071LB Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Jessica Soedirgo, Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam – Roeterseiland
Mail to: Postbus 15578, 1001 NB Amsterdam, The Netherlands
