By Turro Wongkaren

I presented a paper entitled “(De-)Institutionalization of Social Movement in Indonesia with Walhi as an Example” at the American Sociological Association Meeting, held in Boston, August 1-4, 2008. My session was in the last day of the conference. It was a refereed round-table session, with four people presenting their work.

On my table, I was the only student as the others were professors (one of the co-author of the papers presented was a big name in Social Movement, and I cited in my paper). Presenters already sent their paper a month before the meeting, so everybody already had idea what the papers were about. Mine got a very good comment, and they all encouraged me to revise (not much) and submit for publication. They specifically were interested in social movement in developing countries, something that is still lacking in the literature.

I enjoyed the discussions during and after my own session, as well as the opportunity to listen to other presentations in other sessions. Because it was held in Boston, I also got an opportunity to do some sight-seeing, and especially to learn a bit more about the U.S. history. All of these would have been difficult without the help from EWCA Travel Grant.

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