The Geertz Prize

The Clifford Geertz Prize in the Anthropology of Religion seeks to encourage excellence in the anthropology of religion by recognizing an outstanding recent book in the field. The Prize is named in honor of the late Professor Clifford Geertz, in recognition of his many distinguished contributions to the anthropological study of religion. The Prize comes with a cash award of USD $650. In awarding the Prize, the Society hopes to foster innovative scholarship, the integration of theory with ethnography, and the connection of the anthropology of religion to the larger world.

  • Read the call for the 2025 Geertz Prize here.

Geertz Prize Winners for 2025:

The authors of the 2025 Geertz Book Prize and Honorable Mentions received their Prize certificates at the Society for the Anthropology (SAR) Business meeting held at the American Anthropological Association Meeting in New Orleans on November 21, 2025.

Winner: Zainab’s Traffic: Moving Saints, Selves, and Others Across Borders (University of California Press) by Emrah Yildiz.

Emrah Yildiz receives the Geertz Prize at the 2025 AAA meeting.

Committee comments:

  • “This book is incredibly engaging. The author weaves together stories from different perspectives and locations along the pilgrimage to discuss the ways movements of pilgrims, contraband, and ideas cross and create bazaars, shrines, and borderlands. The stories were rich and detailed.”
  • “[This book] breaks new ground in an anthropology of Islam, dominated by piety and ethical subject-making (or critiques of this approach). By knitting together commerce, politics, mobility, and religion the book gives a richly contextualized picture. It is hard to do multi-sited, transnational ethnography well, but this book does just that under difficult research conditions impacted by wars, US sanctions, and border closures. I can see this book being of interest beyond the anthropology of Islam, for anyone interested in the entanglement of borders, US sanctions, and illicit economies. It is a masterful work.”

Honorable Mentions

Seductive Spirits: Deliverance, Demons, and Sexual Worldmaking in Ghanian Pentecostalism (Stanford University Press) by Nathaneal Homewood.

Nathaneal Homewood receives a Geertz Prize honorable mention at the 2025 AAA meeting.

Committee comments:

  • “Seductive Spirits moves the field forward by taking demonic assemblages seriously as interlocutors (in metaphysical, theoretical, and ethnographic ways). In this way, this masterful book makes an outstanding contribution to the various anthropologies of religion.”
  • “This really is a stunning piece of ethnographic work. Written with warmth and generosity, a genuine sense of bewilderment and wonder, as well as humility and impressive perceptiveness, the author never lets theory get ahead of him, never allows theoretical ruminations or disciplinary allegiance overtake a deeply rooted sense of responsibility to the living, breathing, and breathtakingly intense world under observation, and later, description.”

Paths Made by Walking: The Work of Howzevi Women in Iran (Indiana University Press) by Amina Tawasil.

Amina Tawasil receives a Geertz Prize honorable mention at the 2025 AAA meeting.

Committee comments:

  • “This is one of the richest ethnographies of Muslim women in recent years, and its significance is increased by its main subject of study, namely, Iranian religious women who identify with the cause of the Islamic revolution and are involved in rigorous Islamic learning and pedagogy. Despite many adversities and obstacles, the author manages to write an extraordinarily detailed, intimate, and sensitive ethnography. The prose is lucid and fluent, and the author really has done the field and the wider world a commendable service in describing, with great care, candor, and unmistakable bravery.”
  • “Tawasil curates an immersive ethnography that offers a groundbreaking window into how howzevi (seminarian) women in post-revolutionary Iran navigate Islamic education and, often from positions of concealment, wield real political and social influence, challenging simplistic portrayals of passive religiosity. By centering the women’s own senses of self, their intellectual labor, and their nuanced practices—from veiling to disputation—she disrupts dominant Western narratives about autonomy and visibility, revealing power refracted through religious commitment rather than secular norms.”

Congratulations to the awardees, and many thanks to the committee members for their hard work: Elayne Oliphant, Kimberly Arkin, James Bielo, J. Brent Crosson, Zareena Grewal, Guangtian Ha, Candace Lukasic, Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, and Erica Vogel.

Recent Recipients of the Geertz Prize

Recent Geertz Prize Honorable Mentions