Enjoying some of the key benefits of ASA membership

Last year I forgot to renew my membership to the American Sociological Association. I rejoined a few days ago and received this email. Ah, finally I can enjoy the “key benefits of membership” to the ASA that I so dearly missed all last year: searching the membership directory, printing receipts, changing my ASA username …

I kid, I kid. But given that we are facing massive austerity in public universities, it may be a good time for the ASA to highlight a bit more explicitly what specific benefits it provides to its members. If this is difficult to identify, then the $300 membership ask is going to be increasingly difficult for a larger swath of the discipline to justify.