| Abstract | Names of scholars from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) who were prominent in the IAMCR from its creation in 1957 to the present day are so few that people familiar with the organisation’s history tend to recall them readily. Yet reasons for their small number are not offered so promptly. One suggested explanation for limitations in IAMCR-MENA networking is based on a threefold critique: that a wider membership would have been recruited if more events had been held in different venues and that differences of vision also stood in the way. This chapter, based on recollections and data gathered from interviews and archives, draws on that suggestion to review IAMCR-MENA relationships in terms of meeting venues (‘place’), influential scholars (‘people’), and approaches to media and communication research (‘paradigms’), bearing in mind that each of these three dimensions evokes contested narratives in which developments both inside and outside the IAMCR are seen to play a part. The research shows how many factors constraining IAMCR-MENA relationships operate beyond the reach of the IAMCR itself or scholars in the MENA region and concludes that, in the face of exogenous and structural obstacles, individual efforts to promote MENA representation in IAMCR have been an uphill struggle. |
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