ABSTRACT
To illustrate the benefits and risks of meeting ethnography for community studies, this chapter focuses on the first author's two four-community comparative ethnographies, a study of gentrifying urban neighborhoods and small towns and a study of lesbian, bisexual, and queer women's (LBQ) migration to four small US cities. The meeting is a crucial data source for ethnographers who wish to understand the interactions, decision-making processes, and community dynamics that take place within communities, urban organizations, and other place-based social forms. The chapter also focuses on the second author's ethnography of second homeownership in a Maine tourist village. It discusses three interlocking suggestions for meeting ethnographers in community studies that may be useful in other meeting ethnography settings. The chapter then offers caveats about the appropriate weight community ethnographers studying place-based population groups or place dynamics ought to give to meetings.
