ABSTRACT
In The Meeting the author suggested that sometimes it is necessary "to walk into a social system backwards in order to see it, and the forms that produce it, in a new way". One of the things that first struck me when author began to think about meetings was how they seemed to be everywhere in social life, and especially everywhere in academic life, but, oddly, almost nowhere in the research literature. Meetings play an important role in both creating as well as challenging the social order. This means that one should examine meetings as both makers and breakers of social order but this also requires asking what it is about meetings that allows them to act in this way. All meetings take place in some type of space and they also require some type of time commitment from participants. When meetings act as mediators they display some of the features of mirrors: to deflect, multiply, transform, and distort images.
