[Discussion] Muslims' Experiences of Globalization

[Gonul Pultar]

The Middle East Center for Peace, Culture and Development at Georgia 
State University and the Georgia Middle East Studies Consortium (GMESC) 
is planning to host a two-day conference on our campus in Atlanta. The 
conference will be held on April 1-2, 2005. The conference will explore, 
on the one hand, how Muslim majority societies have been transformed by 
the processes of globalization, and how, on the other hand, Muslims have 
conditioned and informed these processes by their participation in or 
contestation of its institutions. In this conference, we would like to 
present a view which conceives globalization as a world historical event 
without a unidirectional flow and with paradoxical consequences. We plan 
to publish the proceedings of the conference in an edited volume under 
the same title.

The conference will be organized around three themes:
I. The Transformation of Muslim Societies: Issues related to (a) 
economic and structural changes, (b) state-building and democracy, and 
(c) cultural formations in the last thirty years.
II. Intellectual Productions: How Muslim intellectuals conceptualize the 
experiences of globalization in regard to issues of (a) science and 
technology, (b) gender relations (Islamic feminism), and (c) theories of 
state, democracy, and human rights.
III. Transnational and Diaspora Muslim Communities: (a) How new Muslim 
immigrant communities are transforming Western societies as well as 
their own homelands, (b) How Muslim "cybercommunities" shape, inform, 
and negotiate the boundaries of public sphere.

Please send a curriculum vitae and a two-page abstract of your paper to 
the e-mail address below.

Deadline for submissions is *September 30* with notification of 
acceptance by October 15, 2004. Limited funding for travel and other 
expenses is available. The authors of accepted abstracts will be asked 
to submit their completed papers by February 1, 2005.

	Prof. Behrooz Ghamari
Department of Sociology
Georgia State University
Atlanta, GA 30303
404-463-9358
Email: bghamari@gsu.edu <mailto:bghamari@gsu.edu>