Minutes, August 2015

Middle East Sociology Working Group
Minutes

Informal meeting, American Sociological Association, Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois, August 23, 2015.

The Middle East Sociology Working Group met at Pizano’s Pizza. Professor Louise Cainkar was foresighted enough to pre-order us four Chicago-style deep-dish pizzas.

At last fall’s informal working-group meeting during the MESA conference in Washington, D.C., we discussed planning for an ASA section on the Global Middle East (or possibly the Global Middle East and Islam). Since that time, our recruitment efforts have fallen considerably short of the 200 ASA members required for the application process. However, our colleague Rita Stephan, who is on the ASA committee on committees, reports that this threshold may be flexible, so perhaps we can move forward despite not having the specified numbers.

[Update, October 20, 2015: The proposal and petition for an ASA section on the Global Middle East is now available at http://mideastsociology.org/asa-section-proposal/.]

In other news shared at the luncheon in Chicago:

* The Arab Council for the Social Sciences is preparing the inaugural Arab Social Science Monitor report, assessing the state of the social sciences in the region. We hope to have a presentation of the report at the MESA meeting in November 2015.

* The new editorial board of the International Journal of Middle East Studies is eager to solicit more papers from social scientists, especially sociologists. If you have a paper that seems appropriate for IJMES, please consider submitting it!

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