Crown Family School’s Robin Bartram Wins Prestigious Max Weber Distinguished Book Award
By Crown Family School
We are proud to announce that Robin Bartram, PhD, Assistant Professor at the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, has been awarded the Max Weber Distinguished Book Award from the Organizations, Occupations, and Work (OOW) Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA).
This prestigious recognition is for her book, Stacked Decks: Building Inspectors and the Reproduction of Urban Inequality (University of Chicago Press, 2022), which sheds light on the role of building code enforcement in perpetuating urban inequality and its impact on vulnerable populations. In Stacked Decks, Dr. Bartram explores how building inspectors, often considered protectors of safety, can unintentionally exacerbate inequalities by enforcing codes in ways that disproportionately affect low-income and marginalized residents. By examining the relationship between building code enforcement, housing policy, and inequality, her work offers a powerful critique of how urban governance can reproduce existing social disparities.
This award, named after the influential sociologist Max Weber, recognizes the most outstanding book that significantly contributes to scholarship on organizations, occupations, and work. Weber’s foundational theories on social structures, bureaucracy, and power dynamics have deeply influenced modern sociology, making this award a particularly distinguished honor for scholars in the field.
Dr. Bartram’s research contributes to our understanding of housing insecurity and urban inequality and has broader implications for addressing systemic issues in urban policy and social justice. This recognition underscores her impact on sociology and housing research and positions her as a leading voice in examining how institutional structures can affect everyday life for vulnerable communities.
We invite you to learn more about her groundbreaking work by exploring her book Stacked Decks and discovering how her research influences the conversation around housing justice and urban inequality.