Minutes, August 2017

Middle East Sociology Working Group
Minutes, August 31, 2017

The Middle East Sociology Working Group met for brunch at Vallier Bistro in Montreal, near the American Sociological Association’s conference site on August 13, 2017, in between two panels featuring members of the working group and the Sociology of Islam network:

• Regular Session. Sociology and the Arab World
• Regular Session. Sociology of Middle East and Muslim Societies

In addition, the ASA also included an unusually large number of related panels:

• Thematic Session. Americanizing Islam? Social Inequality, Institutional Interaction, and the Question of a Muslim American Field
• Presidential Panel. Immigration, Security, Islam in Europe
• Special Session. The Future of Muslim Societies: Governance, Movements, and Religion
• Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities. Comparative Racial Formation: Arabs, Middle Easterners, and/or Muslims

This representation may have reflected the priorities of this year’s ASA president, Michèle Lamont, but it may also reflect the increase in sociological interest in Middle Eastern and Muslim communities. This increase was also reflected in the announcement by F. Müge Göçek of the University of Michigan that she is negotiating with a publisher to produce the first Handbook of Middle East Sociology.

As of the conference, our petition for a new ASA section on the Global Middle East still stood about 30 names short of the 200-signatory threshold. If you are an ASA member and have not yet signed, or know of other ASA members who might be interested in signing, please visit the petition webpage.

Finally, for those of you who have asked to be listed on the Middle East Sociology Working Group webpage, would you please check to make sure that your information is up-to-date? If you are not listed and would like to be, please write me at kurzman@unc.edu.

Minutes taken by Charles Kurzman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.