Message forwarded by the Chair:
Dear professor Hussin,
My name is Ali Kadivar, a PhD candidate at UNC-CH sociology. A colleague of mine and I are organizing a Panel in the Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting 2013 in New Orleans. We thought some of the members of the religion and politics section in APSA would be interested in this panel. I would greatly appreciate it if you forward this call for paper to the APSA religion and politics listserve. Thanks very much.
Sincerely,
Ali
Greetings everyone,
We Are seeking participants for a panel for the Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting, MESA 2013: "Religious Authorities and Political Transitions in the Middle East".
Different socio-political actors have taken various positions with regards to the recent political upheavals in the Middle East. Several actors joined the opposition against the authoritarian governments; some sided with the regimes; few preferred silence anxiously observing the developments while others preferred to remain impartial. Religious establishments which have been one of the oldest social institutions in Middle Eastern societies are still are a key player. Their complicated relationship with the political authorities have taken different forms in different periods, ranging from opposition and repression to cooptation, withdrawal, and measured autonomy among others. In the last episode of contention in the Middle East, we also observe such variation, which gives rise to questions of interest include but are not limited to:
– How could we describe the political position of the religious authorities in each country? And what factors have been influential in shaping such positions?
– In cases when the religious actors supported or joined pro-democracy movements, what can we infer about the broader topic of religion and democratization?
– How the political positions of religious actors facilitated or constrained the process of mobilization?
– What role did the religious vocabularies play in the political rhetoric of contention as well as the repository of emotions and affects?
At least, one paper, is already in place explaining different political positions that Grand Ayatollahs took about Iran’s Green Movement in 2009.
We are looking to recruit up to three further papers. If you are interested in being involved in this panel, please send a 400-word
abstract to Ali Kadivar (kadivar@unc.edu) or Ali Reza Eshraghi (eshraghi@email.unc.edu) no later than 9 February, and be prepared to register with and submit to MESA no later than 15 February.
Ali Kadivar
Associate Editor at Social Forces
PhD Candidate
Department of Sociology
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill