The Vanishing Hectare: Property and Value in Postsocialist Transylvania. 2003. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 420 pp.
- Recipient of the 2011 J. I. Staley Prize from The School for Advanced Research (SAR).
- Recipient of the William A. Douglass Prize of the Society for the Anthropology of Europe, American Anthropological Association.
- Honorable Mention for the Wayne S. Vucinich Prize, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.
- Honorable Mention for the Barbara Jelavich Prize, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.
The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change. 1999. NY: Columbia University Press, 185 pp.
- Recipient of the Heldt Prize, Association of Women in Slavic Studies.
- Romanian translation Bucureşti: Editura Vremea, 2007.
- Chapter 1 reprinted in Death, Mourning, and Burial: A Cross-Cultural Reader, ed. Antonius C.G.M. Robben. Blackwell, 2004.
What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? 1996. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 298 pp.
- Romanian translation, Iaşi: Editura Institutului European, 2003.
- Serbian translation, Belgrade: Edicija REČ, 2005.
- Greek translation, pending.
National Ideology Under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceauşescu’s Romania. 1991. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 406 pp.
- Romanian translation Bucharest: Editura Humanitas, 1994.
Transylvanian Villagers: Three Centuries of Political, Economic, and Ethnic Change. 1983. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 431 pp.
Edited volumes
Peasants under Siege: The Collectivization of Romanian Agriculture, 1949-1962, co-edited with Gail Kligman. 2011. Princeton University Press.
Property in Question: Value Transformation in the Global Economy, co-edited with Caroline Humphrey. 2004. Berg Press.
Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Everyday Life in the Postsocialist World, co-edited with Michael Burawoy. 1999. Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield, 322 pp.
National Character and National Ideology in Interwar Eastern Europe, co-edited with Ivo Banac. 1995. New Haven: Yale Center for International Studies, 254 pp.
Gender and Nationalism in Eastern Europe. Special issue of East European Politics and Societies 8 (2), co-edited with József Böröcz. 1994.