The Distinguished Scholarship Award is given by the Pacific Sociological Association (PSA) to sociologists based in the Pacific region of North America, in recognition of major scholarly contributions.^[1] To be eligible for the award, a sociologist's contribution must be embodied in a recently published book or through a series of articles with a common theme.^[2]

The Distinguished Scholarship Award was created by the PSA in 1984. The award was given biennially until 1990, when it became an annually granted award.^[4]

• 2023 - Nadia Y. Kim, Loyola Marymount University: Refusing Death: Immigrant Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice in LA
• 2022 - Matthew Clair, Stanford University: Privilege and Punishment: How Race and Class Matter in Criminal Court
• 2021 - Tahseen Shams, University of Toronto: Here, There, and Elsewhere: The Making of Immigrant Identities in a Globalized World
• 2020 - Ranita Ray, University of Nevada, Las Vegas: The Making of a Teenage Service Class: Poverty and Mobility in an American City
• 2019 - Abigail Leslie Andrews, University of California, San Diego: Undocumented Politics: Place, Gender, and the Pathways of Mexican Migrants
• 2018 - Viraji Weeraseena, University of California, Riverside: The Structural Sources of Violent Crimes in Post-Civil War Sri Lanka
• 2017 - Allison Nasson, University of Puget Sound: Donor Friendly Victimhood: Narrative Construction as a Fundraising Strategy
• 2016 - Michael Messner (University of Southern California), Max Greenberg (University of Southern California), and Tal Peretz (Auburn University): Some Men: Feminist Allies and the Movement to End Violence Against Women
• 2015 - Paul Almeida, University of California, Merced: Mobilizing Democracy: Globalization and Citizen Protest
• 2014 - Isaac William Martin, University of California, San Diego: Rich People’s Movements: Grassroots Campaigns to Untax the One Percent
• 2013 - Drew Halfmann, University of California, Davis: Doctors and Demonstrators: How Political Institutions Shape Abortion Law in the United States, Britain, and Canada
• 2012 - Cecilia Menjívar, Arizona State University: Enduring Violence: Latino Women's Lives in Guatemala
• 2011 - Julie Shayne, University of Washington Bothell and University of Washington Seattle: They Used to Call Us Witches: Chilean Exiles, Culture, and Feminism
• 2010 - Kimberly Richman, University of San Francisco: Courting Change: Queer Parents, Judges, and the Transformation of American Family Law
• 2009 - Edward Telles and Vilma Ortiz, University of California Los Angeles: Generations of Exclusion: Mexican Americans, Assimilation, and Race
• 2008 - Ivan Light, University of California Los Angeles: Deflecting Immigration: Networks, Markets and regulation in Los Angeles
• 2007 - Jerome Karabel, University of California Berkeley: The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton
• 2006 - John Foran, University of California Santa Barbara: Taking Power: On the Origins of Third World Revolutions and Paul Lichterman, University of Southern California: Elusive Togetherness: Church Groups Trying to Bridge America’s Divisions
• 2005 - No award given
• 2004 - Evelyn Nakano Glenn, University of California Berkeley: Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizens and Laura Grindstaff, University of California Davis: The Money Shot: Trash, Class, and the Making of TV Talk Shows
• 2003 - Amy Binder, University of California, San Diego: Contentious Curricula: Afrocentrism and Creationism in American Public Schools
• 2002 - Pierrett Hondagneu-Sotelo, University of Southern California: Domestica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence
• 2001 - Valerie Jeness, University of California Irvine for a series of published articles dealing with hate-crimes, hate-crime legislation, and community responses to hate-motivated violence. The series was published in the following journals between 1994 and 1998: Gender and Society, Social Problems, Sociological Perspectives, Research in Social Movements, Conflict and Change, and the American Sociological Review.
• 2000 - Charles Varano: Forced Choices: Class, Community, and Worker Ownership
• 1999 - William Domhoff: Who Rules America? Power and Politics in the Year 2000
• 1998 - Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi: Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini's Italy
• 1997 - Calvin Morrill: The Executive Way : Conflict Management in Corporations
• 1996 - James Aho: This Thing of Darkness: The Sociology of the Enemy
• 1995 - John Foran: Fragile Resistance
• 1994 - David A. Snow and Leon Anderson, Down on Their Luck: A Study of Homeless Street People
• 1993 - Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge: A Theory of Religion
• 1992 - Kathy Charmaz: "Good Days, Bad Days, The Self in Chronic Illness and Time"
• 1991 - George M. Thomas: "Revivalism and Cultural Change: Christianity, Nation Building, and the Market in 19th-Century United States"
• 1990 - Jack Katz: Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attraction to Doing Evil
• 1988 - Unknown or No award given
• 1986 - Claude S. Fischer: To Dwell Among Friends: Personal Networks in Town and City
• 1984 - No award given

• List of social sciences awards