David Snow, UCI sociology Distinguished Professor, is the 2013 recipient of the John D. McCarthy Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Scholarship of Social Movements and Collective Behavior. Awarded by the University of Notre Dame Center for the Study of Social Movements, the honor recognizes Snow for his extraordinary achievements in social movement research and mentorship of interdisciplinary scholars.

“As editor of Mobilization, I have an unusual vantage point when it comes to recognizing the impact David Snow’s work has had on social movement research,” says Rory McVeigh, Center for the Study of Social Movements director. “Very few submissions to our journal do not engage his work in one way, shape or form. And if they don’t, the reviewers typically tell the authors that they must.”

Based on his research on religious movements and conversion processes in the 1970s and on homeless movements in the early 80s, Snow developed a new theory for better understanding how the interests and views of social movement leaders and participants align for the purposes of collective mobilization. Coined as “frame alignment,” his theory led to the now widely influential framing perspective on social movements, which has been applied in sociology, political science, public policy and organizational studies as a way to better understand collective mobilization of all kinds.

He has authored or co-authored more than 100 articles and chapters and eight books, including most recently, as lead co-editor, the three volume Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements which includes 450 entries from some of the field’s most prominent international authors.

A past president of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction and the Pacific Sociological Association and past vice president of the American Sociological Association, Snow has been lauded for his work. In 2008, the Society for the Study of Social Problems awarded him the Lee Founders Award for career contributions to the study of social problems. In 2011, he earned UCI’s highest campus-level distinction for faculty – the title of Distinguished Professor, and in 2012, the UCI Alumni Association named him the 2012 Lauds & Laurels Outstanding Faculty.

Snow is the seventh scholar to receive the McCarthy award since its founding in 2006. He will be honored at a special award ceremony May 4 at Notre Dame where he will also deliver a public lecture at the fourth annual Young Scholars in Social Movements Conference.

-Heather Ashbach, Social Sciences Communications
-photo by Kristen Salsbury, Social Sciences