Four faculty from the University of New Mexico Department of Sociology received accolades for their published works. Sharon Erickson Neptstad and Howard Waitzkin, recently won major national book awards; and Maria Velez and Christopher Lyons have an article set for publication in the November issue of the journal, Criminology.
Nepstad's book, "Nonviolent Revolutions: Civil Resistance in the Late 20th Century" (Oxford U Press), won the 2012 Outstanding Book Award from the American Sociological Association's section on Peace, War and Social Conflict. The book examines the different outcomes of nonviolent civilian movements highlighting Tiananmen Square and the East German uprising.
Nepstad, chair of sociology, received her Ph.D. from the University of Colorado and completed post-doctoral studies at Princeton University. She has been a visiting scholar at Notre Dame University's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. She has authored numerous articles and books on social movements, civil resistance and religion.
"Medicine and Public Health at the End of the Empire" (Paradigm Publishers), which examines corporate influence on global health care, earned Waitzkin the 2012 Freidson Award, the
most prestigious award for a publication given by the Medical Sociology Section of the ASA.
Waitzkin is distinguished professor emeritus in the Department of Sociology and the School of Medicine at UNM. He also practices medicine as a primary care practitioner in rural northern New Mexico. His work focuses on social conditions that lead to illness, unnecessary suffering and early death.
Velez and Lyons collaborated on "Neighborhood Housing Investments and Violent Crime in Seattle, 1981-2007" (co-authored with Blake Boursaw), an article which appears in the November 2012 issue of Criminology, the leading journal in the field.