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Volume 42, Number 3 Spring 2008

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The 2008 preliminary program is now on our Web site: www.sociologyofreligion.com. If you lack Web access, hence need a paper copy, or you have Web access and would like a searchable Word file emailed to you, contact the Executive Office. It is an exciting program, and I hope you will attend. We have several sessions specifically directed toward students (see especially the mentoring session, K1, which requires preregistration) as well as outstanding thematic presentations featuring colleagues from around the world. Now it is time for you to respond by completing your preregistration materials.

Your preregistration entitles you to save money and also is of enormous assistance to us in making adequate plans for the meeting to serve everyone most effectively.

Please note, in particular, the following:

Preregistration requirements will be strictly enforced, both in terms of program participation and charges. Try to firm up your plans in the next few days, and send in your materials.

Our meeting preregistration form is in this mailing. Information concerning our hotel is also contained here. The hotel will not be using forms, so you must work from this newsletter when making your reservation, either by phone or fax.

Most of you will probably choose to fly directly to Boston, to which a wide number of airlines provide direct service from major US cities as well as some in Europe—even Icelandair! You would do well to check various discount air travel sites to see which possible alternative routes, including air-rail connections, would provide you the most economical and convenient service. Rail service is also available and can be a time-saving option on the east coast and from some midwestern locales, especially in view of airport security measures. Bus service is another possibility. For local directions, see below.

We are based at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel (which is affiliated with the Starwood [Sheraton] chain.) This is an exceptionally well-situated hotel, with a lot of history. The SSSP is also meeting there at the same time this year (on a different floor). Our rate is lower than theirs (by 10%), therefore there is no motivation for the hotel extend our block at our rates. Please note that this year we begin on a Thursday, the 31st of July. The ASA Religion Section day is principally the 3rd, but will carry over to the 4th. Our block holds through the ASA meetings, so if you have interests or commitments later there, you do not have to change hotels to participate in both meetings. If you wish to stay on beyond the night of the 3rd (or before the night of the 29th), however, you need to contact the Executive Office to have us try to make case-by-case arrangements with the hotel, which may or may not be possible at the ASR rate. You can learn more about the hotel on its Website, www.bostonparkplaza.com, but do not use the Web site to make your reservations! See below instead.

The deadline for hotel reservations is 29 June, the same as the preregistration deadline, but only a limited number of rooms are available, so reserving early is in your best interest. If you have difficulty making reservations with the hotel before the deadline, please contact the Executive Office at once (309-932-2727; bill4329@hotmail.com). After the deadline, there’s not a lot we can do to help you.

It is important that you stay at the ASR hotel. In 2004 we paid extra hotel charges due to lack of adequate hotel registration on the part of our meeting attendees—in spite of what was then the largest meeting registration in our history!

Here's how you make reservations: Either phone the hotel at 800-225-2008 or fax the hotel at 617-457-2610. If you're phoning from outside North America, you must use 617-426-2000 and choose option 1. Our reservation code is, very inventively, Association for the Sociology of Religion, Our rate is $179 night single/double. Make sure you get a confirmation number, write it down, and don't lose it. If you fax and do not get a reply to your fax, it’s best to confirm by phone.

Getting to the hotel: The hotel Website also provides a downtown map and driving directions into the city, as well as some information on other options getting into the city. (You can also consult the MBTA Web site www.mbta.com for public transportation.) Using public transportation from the airport is not simple, but it is possible. It may involve something of a hike at the airport plus a change in town. Transport from the Boston rail terminals is quite easy. A lot depends on how much luggage you are carrying. If it’s more than one bag, you'll probably be happier taking a cab.

Our registration desk will be open Wednesday from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m., Thursday and Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.; Saturday from 8:00 to 1:00. We should be able to have the book exhibit open daily from noon Thursday, with pick up of purchases Saturday from 8:15 to 10:15, and the final sale from 10:15 ’til noon. Doublecheck when you arrive! Also, plan to join Council for the opening reception on Thursday night. Further details of that event will be included with your preregistration confirmation. You can still have a book included in the book exhibit if you will send author, title, and full publisher address to the Executive Office by 1 June. At the same time, please note that books can be exhibited only if publishers send them to us—so a word from you directly to your publisher is very helpful.

ASR will try to provide overhead projectors on an as needed basis. We will be contacting presenters via email in mid-June to assess these needs. If you need an overhead and will be away from your email during June, alert us before you go! In general, overhead projectors are provided when they are necessary to present materials in a way that it is not reasonably possible to do through printed handouts. These are standard overhead projectors, using transparencies, not Powerpoint. The ASR does not provide other audiovisual equipment. You must either bring your own or make arrangements with the hotel’s a/v service provider, for which contact the ASR Executive Office. Also note that if you bring your own a/v equipment, you must bring everything you require, not least electrical cords to make your equipment work!

We have reasonable expectation that volumes 15 and 16 of our "Religion and the Social Order" series, North American Buddhists in Social Context, edited by Paul D. Numrich, and Religion and Diversity in Canada, edited by Lori Beaman and Peter Beyer, will be available at the meeting. The Wednesday night reception is co-sponsored by Brill to honor the contributors to and editors of these books. Please join us to honor those colleagues who are able to attend and enjoy the hospitality of greeting old friends and making new ones as the meeting begins.

The RSO series has been published by the Brill publishing house of Leiden, the Nether-lands, since 2005. The ASR members’ price is $29 (plus postage). You may purchase either or both of these volumes now, in advance, for shipment in late August. We hope to have copies for sale as well at the meeting itself. The members’ price will continue through the membership renewal period this winter, so you will have another chance to purchase a copy at the time you renew your membership. This is a very attractive price for a volume of this quality. Those volumes ordered during the last membership renewal period are now in the mail. We occasionally get questions about the availability of selected books among volumes 1-10 of the series. We have now determined that there are no new copies of these books available through any publisher, hence must be sought individually on the used book market.

The last issue of News & Announcements, mentioned that the Publications Committee is considering the question of whether Sociology of Religion should continue to be published independently and managed from the Executive Office or whether it should enter into a cooperative relationship with a commercial publisher. There are many issues involved, both editorially and financially. This item remains under discussion. If you have any thoughts about these, especially if they are connected to concrete experience, you may wish to share them with Publications Chair Fred Kniss, fkniss@luc.edu. ASR is currently receiving markedly increased royalty income from on-line service providers, and this development will need to be factored into our journal economy.

Less well off the ground is an attempt to reassess the nature of the ASR Web site, which will not be maintained at the Executive Office after 2011 at the latest, but which could be moved or renovated sooner. You might particularly want to compare our site to the SSSR (www.sssrweb.org) and the RRA sites (http://rra.hartsem.edu [note: no www]). Persons who think they could offer on-going specific expertise in this area might want to contact Mary Jo Neitz, neitzm@missouri.edu.

Third, anyone who has specific expertise with professional meeting planners (hotel finders, for all intents and purposes) might well share this with the Executive Office (bill4329@ hotmail.com). In our present model, the Executive Officer contacts and contracts hotels for our meetings. Some organizations use professional agencies who do this on their behalf. If you have had good or bad concrete experiences with such services, we would like to learn about them. (Just in passing: SSSP uses a professional meeting planning firm. They’re paying $199/night this year in the same hotel as we are. We don’t use a professional meeting agency. We’re paying $179/night. Any quantitativists among you want to work that out at roughly 600 room nights?)

These three areas especially need consideration as we prepare to engage a new Executive Officer and detail his or her working responsibilities. At present all of these activities center in the person of the Executive Officer. If this is to continue, then we must look for someone who brings experience, interest, and time commensurate with these tasks. ASR has run relatively well, relatively cheaply, on this mode of administration for about 30 years across three executives. But appropriate modes of action change across time, and it is worth taking a look at our operations at least in these areas.