*** CALL FOR PARTICIPATION ***
As some of you may know, Laura Raynolds and I are co-organizing the
PEWS Roundtables at the ASA meetings. We have been in touch with many of
you individually regarding your proposals for papers/roundtables. I had
approached a couple of people with the idea of organizing a RT on the
future of PEWS: the problem of declining membership in PEWS,
feelings of intellectual alienation experienced by some folks,
perceptions regarding the receptiveness of "PEWS" to alternative discourses
on (and critiques of) development and global processes of change--issues
that have come up in discussions on the pages of past issues of the
"PEWS News" (starting with Phil McMicheal's note, "Whither PEWS?"
Summer 1994 and continued in latest issue), and also on this list.
I am sure that the entire section membership will want to participate
in, and have some input into, discussions on the future of the section.
Although some sort of discussion on this at the general meeting might
thus be warranted, I thought that an informal roundtable discussion
might be a good way to further this debate in a more intimate setting
at the meetings.
Unfortunately, we have not been able to get anyone to agree to organize
a RT on this issue yet. I was wondering if there was anyone out there
who would be interested in in leading a discussion and organizing a
rountable on this, tentatively titled:
"Is PEWS Old News? (Or, Whats in a Name?)"
Perhaps the informal table discussion could include previous contributors
to this debate, and/or fresh perspectives which we have not yet heard?
It would be good to hear from new PEWS members as well as old--perhaps a
graduate student, a former/current/future PEWS section officer,
and someone willing to do a bit of legwork to organize this?
You may want to note that we have been trying to keep the number of
presentations at each table to 3, in addition to listing
one person as a discussant/facilitator (who may also be a presentor).
Should someone decide to go ahead with this, we would need the following
(via email is fine) *as soon as possible*:
(i) Panel title;
(ii) Discussant name and affilitation;
(iii) Individual presentation titles, along with complete affiliation
and contact information on all presentors.
If you are interested in participating, but do not have the resources
to organize a roundtable, we'd like to hear from you too. Please send us the
requisite information on your individual planned presentation and we will
try to fit it into the rountable(s). This also holds for planned
submissions unrelated to the above issue. Since time is running short, we
really need to hear back by *this week*/ASAP.
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Jayati Lal, JL34@cornell.edu
Laura Raynolds, LRaynolds@vines.colostate.edu
PEWS Rountable Co-cordinators, ASA'95
Jayati Lal
Department of Sociology
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853-7601
(607) 657-2607
email: JL34@cornell.edu