ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a specific aspect of planning meetings, decision making. It examines the adaptations of each committee to the 'strangeness' of the context: the metaprocesses through which Scrubfield Marine Reserve Committee (SMRC) and Harbourtown Industry Committee (HIC) emerged as local communities of practice in spite of the differences of habitus and culture. The chapter begins this analysis from the positioned assumption that making decisions is necessary for the success of a collaborative planning exercise: that decisions constitute the basis for substantive achievement, and that substantive achievement is the goal of most participants. It recognise that this assumption is not incontestable, and that at a holistic level outcomes other than substantive decisions may also be considered 'successes': learning; exploration of individual, group or place identity; construction of new knowledge and practices; participant's satisfaction with the opportunity to be heard, or to hear other voices.
