The APLA Book Prize in Critical Anthropology recognizes work that best exemplifies creativity and rigor in the ethnographic exploration of politics, law, and/or their interstices.
Jurors: Sahana Ghosh (Chair), Narges Bajoghli, Mahmoud Keshavarz, and Katherine Lemons.
Congratulations to Sandhya Fuchs for Fragile Hope: Seeking Justice for Hate Crimes in India (Stanford University Press, 2025).
In a social world suffused with violence, how can the law remain an avenue for hope? How is that hope cultivated through and despite the struggles of communities at the bottom of South Asia’s violently hierarchical caste system? Sandhya Fuch’s brilliant and powerful book takes on these questions through an ethnography of the Prevention of Atrocities Act – India’s only hate crime law to tackle caste-based violence.
Fuchs takes us outside the courtroom and bureaucracy as the book delves into the social world of the law in the lives of Dalit communities. It traces the different paths that cases take following experiences of horrific violence and centers the complicated relations that Dalits have with law and the state as custodians of social transformation. With deep empathy, sensitivity, and theoretical sophistication, the book unpacks the imaginaries of justice and ethical investments that sustain struggle, accomplish imperfect change, and hopeful practices against all odds. This is a stunning book and speaks to our times. The committee was unanimous in its decision to recognize this inspiring work of political and legal anthropology.
Sandhya Fuchs is Assistant Professor in Criminology at the University of Bristol. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the LSE, a MPhil degree in social anthropology from the University of Oxford, and a BA in Anthropology and Philosophy from Colby College. Sandhya’s research has been funded by the Wenner Gren Foundation, The Leverhulme Trust and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Fragile Hope also won the 2025 James Busuttil Award for Human Rights Scholarship issued annually by the Royal Asiatic Society.
The APLA Graduate Student Paper Prize recognizes graduate student work that expands the purview of political and legal anthropology and challenges us to think in new ways about power, politics, and law.
Jurors: Mark Schuller (Chair), Hayal Akarsu, and Taras Fedirko.
Congratulations to Johnathan Norris, winner, for “Queering Safety in a State of Penetration: Intermittent State Violence and a Politics of (In)Visibility.”
This well-written piece about LGBT communities targeted by law enforcement in Amman, Jordan, is grounded on extremely strong ethnography, theorizing from the case materials. The argument about safety & visibility & queerness is excellent, plus the critique of violence as atmospheric/affective/everyday is well-analyzed through the ethnography. The text charts new ethnographic ground and offers an insightful analysis on a topic and population too often relegated to stereotypes.
Johnathan Norris is currently a Fellow in Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. They are also a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology with plans to defend their dissertation in Spring 2026. Johnathan’s dissertation, Gay Amman: Worldmaking at the Limits of Queer Theory, based on 19-months of ethnographic research in Jordan, traces how LGBTQ Arabs in Amman, though identifying as queer/kwīr, embody an alternative to the rights-based, pro-resistance, and anti-normative discourses common to Western understandings of queerness.
Congratulations to the following individuals who received honorable mentions:
Hayat-Alessandra Naada Bahit’s “This Sea Was Mine: The Sea as a Space of Loss and Imagination in Palestinian Narratives.” This article is a very strong ethnography of Palestinian community activists and international human rights solidarity activists. It is beautifully, poetically, movingly written. Committee members especially liked the way it theorizes the imaginary of sea via a vis (im)mobility. This paper is also extremely timely and symbolically important given that the author completed the fieldwork just before Oct 2023.
Thomas Long’s “‘MAGA is the Message:’ Retheorizing the (In)Coherence of Pro Trump Politics Through McLuhan.” This ethnographic analysis, following MAGA supporters at various public protests, shows how truth-value is less important than belonging within MAGA discourse. Committee members especially liked the way the author theorizes “incoherence” & “medium.” The text is a refreshing & solid analysis and tied well with the ethnography. The article is also very timely.
Given the exceptional strength of the field, the prize committee also identified five additional finalists. The winner and finalists were paired with mentors to assist in revising their papers for publication, and they attended a mentoring session at AAA with the PoLAR editorial team.
Association for Political and Legal Anthropology 