ABSTRACT
The study of American formal organizations is an area of research that has been rediscovered by anthropologists, although the topic has a long history in the discipline. This chapter shows how the anthropological study of a specific formal organization reveals taken-for-granted aspects of life in complex organizations. The mental health organization is thus used as a context for understanding the meeting as a social form in American life; at the same time meetings are used as a context for understanding events within a specific organization. Research was conducted at Midwest Community Mental Health Center (MCMHC) between January 1975 and July 1976, and was designed to study and document the Center’s implementation of a community paraprofessional model for the treatment of chronically mentally ill patients. The importance of meetings at MCMHC can be structurally illustrated by comparing a typical organizational chart with what is referred to as a meeting organizational chart.
