Decision making through silence may seem counterintuitive. However, many unprogrammed Quakers believe that their deliberative process of finding the ''sense of the meeting'' in monthly administrative meetings is based in silence. Drawing on the ethnography of communication and cultural discourse theory, this article analyzes recordings of naturally occurring interaction during Quaker meetings for business. Building on research on silence as generative, it argues that, in this context, communal silence plays an active role in decision making through a process understood to take precedence over its outcome. This article contributes to an understanding of the functions of silence in different cultural contexts. The analysis suggests that in the context of Quaker meetings for business, silences serve to prepare participants to take part in decision making and also structure the unfolding of the decision-making process, as participants wait and listen for guidance. The article also explores the situated processes of community formation embodied in these meetings.

No abstract

This article is a creative reconstruction of reflexivity as it operates for some practitioners of the ethnography of communication. Our central concern is conceptualized as "discursive reflexivity"; with that concept, we foreground communication both as primary data and as our primary theoretical concern. As a result, we treat reflexivity as a process of metacommunication, that is, as a reflexive process of using discourse at one level to discuss discourse on another. Following current and past research, we explore how dimensions of discursive reflexivity differently configure into five types of ethnographic practice, these being theoretical, descriptive, interpretive, comparative, and critical inquiry. Each is discussed as analytically distinct from the others, yet all coalesce experientially or, in other words, all coexist in one's experience as an ethnographer. Relationships are discussed between discursive reflexivity and self-reflexivity, including various modes of ethnographic reporting and future directions for inquiry.

No abstract