ABSTRACT
Chapter 7 is a case analysis of a decision-making process and considers how the meanings activists attribute to key expressions affect this process. The campaign presented a challenge for aspects of a group’s style that activists typically took for granted, such as the boundaries of the group or its organizational capacities. The chapter focuses on one of EXIT’s meetings as one of the groups participating in the campaign. The campaign was based on a style of thinking big instead of thinking small, which created frictions in EXIT’s meeting where thinking small dominated – frictions that turned into conflicts. Based on a detailed analysis, I show that disagreements and conflicts are fueled by different expectations which impregnate themselves in expressions that are key for the organization of the campaign. Disagreements and agreements serve as practical simplifications that allow participants to judge whether the understanding of others is adequate. In the case considered, different expectations about the campaign needed to be articulated, and the conflicts that emerged out of them needed to be resolved for collective planning to be possible, and a decision is one such solution that allows activists to continue planning despite their differences.
