For the 2020 prize, the Award Committee received 78 books to consider for the prize and shortlisted 10 works for this year’s prize. Books were evaluated for their overall scholarly quality, their contributions to the field of Science and Technology Studies, and their capacity to cast social or political issues in a new light.
The 2020 Rachel Carson Prize was awarded to Sara Ann Wylie, for Fractivism: Corporate Bodies and Chemical Bonds (Duke University Press, 2018). Wylie’s interdisciplinary book contributes to a range of fields of interest to STS scholars, including postcolonial anthropology, digital-media studies, citizen science, and environmental health and justice movements.
The Carson Prize Committee also recognized the important reach of Wylie’s book. In addition to its thorough portrait of the ground-level realities experienced by fracking communities, Wylie models how “making and doing” in STS practice can develop civic infrastructures that contribute to social justice.
Committee members feel the volume of books to review has become unmanageable. While we made some changes this year to the nomination process, it was not well communicated to our community. For the 2021 prize, we need to underscore that nominations must be made by a 4s member and not by book presses. We also worked with the Fleck Prize committee this year to better distinguish between the two prizes since books are often submitted for both.
2020 Carson Prize Committee: Roopali Phadke (Chair, Macalester College, US), Aalok Khandekar (IIT Hyderabad, India), Maria Belen Albornoz (Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, Ecuador), Hsin-Hsing Chen (Shih-Hsin University Graduate Institute, Taiwan).
