- Throws the spotlight on the epistemological and ontological basis of coming together through formal meetings of different kinds
- Demonstrates how meetings - socially and institutionally prescribed spaces for coming together - are important and ubiquitous organisational forms in various political, religious and economic settings
- Shows how meetings feature prominently in classic anthropological accounts, and in more contemporary ethnography, particularly in relation to studies of documents, organizations, policy, development, politics, and science and technology