the significance of meetings in an American mental health center

Anthropologists are increasingly turning their attention to the study of complex organizations. This paper uses the study of an American mental health center to examine a previously taken‐for‐granted social form in these settings, the meeting. In this way, the organization is used as a context for examining the significance of meetings in American life, and at the same time meetings are used as a context for understanding events within a specific organization. [complex organizations, alternative organizations, meetings, symbolic analysis, decision contexts, urban America]