 Rubinstein was from 1999-2013 a member of the board of directors of the Ploughshares Fund, Fort Mason, San Francisco, California.He received the 2016 The Victor Sidel and Barry Levy Award for Peace from the American Public Health Association , and the 2010 Robert B. Textor and Family Prize for Anticipatory Anthropology from the American Anthropological Association 
Rubinstein applies a multilevel theoretical perspective to examining aspects of human social life.Since proposing in 1984 the "Rule of Minimal Inclusion," in "Science as Cognitive Process" (which says that adequate accounts of human phenomena must include information about the adjacent levels of systemic organization to those at the level of the phenomenon investigated) Rubinstein has applied this perspective to a variety of areas.