ABSTRACT
The purpose of this book is to explore meetings as both ethnographic objects in themselves and as sites of ethnographic inquiry of diverse issues and practices-what we have called meeting ethnography. The author tries to represent more of these scholars' voices in this introduction in order to give a sense of how, over time and space and through our own meetings, the grist and structure for our theoretical understanding was crafted. In this chapter, the author contextualizes this meeting ethnography project within earlier treatments of meetings in related fields. He then shares some of what this project has looked like collectively, as well as where it has led us conceptually. The rest of the book details particular ethnographers' efforts to grapple with meetings in diverse field sites of governance, organization, and resistance/activism. In the final chapter, Helen B. Schwartzman concludes the volume by discussing and analyzing the chapters in relation to her understanding of meetings.
