Sophie Thunus
This blog post is based on the Evidence & Policy article, ‘Meeting in brackets: how mental health policy travels through meetings’.
Meetings matter. They produce the policies for which they are organised. Yet meetings are taken for granted. We organise them, we participate in them, and we complain about them, especially when they do not achieve their purpose. However, we rarely question them: we continue to go to meetings that seem ineffective without asking why, and without wondering what these meetings might do to the policy process to which they relate, and to their participants.
The concept of meeting in brackets helps us to understand how meetings make policy. It has four implications, which have been derived from a multi-year sociological study of the implementation of a Belgian mental health policy.
The first implication is to bracket out the instrumental purpose for which the meeting is organised: a purpose that often relates to the organisation and coordination of human action, such as making a decision or solving a problem. Putting aside this instrumental conception of meetings, largely dominant in Western culture, is the first thing to do to be able to see what else meetings might do.
The second implication is to see meeting as a parenthesis or an interruption in ongoing processes: to go to the meeting the participants have to stop doing what they see as their core work. Meanwhile, the fact that a meeting is organised says something: something new is going to happen! For example: a new policy is about to be launched and it could have an impact on the way you work! The meeting is thus a difference that makes a difference.
The third implication is to see meetings as events unfolding in brackets, within a parenthesis that draws a line, a separation between the meeting outside, its social environment which is governed by established views of the world and social order, and the meeting inside. The separation is achieved through bracketing decisions applying to the meeting structure (e.g. meeting place, time and type of facilitation). The separation is never complete, but it isneeded for the development of a communication I describe as reflexive in reference to Luhmann’s sociology. Although unpredictable, reflexive communication is political: it enables a collective process of expression/selection of different visions of the meeting topic. This process results in a unique creation, such as a particular vision of the policy under discussion. Put otherwise, just as a parenthesis in a text, the meeting produces an illustration of what the policy – the text, means to its participants – the readers of the text.
The fourth implication is to see meetings as parentheses that relate to one another, thus forming a web of meetings. This web is created through references made by the meeting participants to other meetings or to documents that result from them. Through the formation of this web, from one meeting to the next, a collective sense of the policy gradually stabilises. This sense is both intended, because it is not independent of the initial vision of the policy discussed in meetings, and unintended since it is iteratively produced through meeting communication.
The concept of meeting in brackets paves the way for rethinking how agency is exerted in policy processes, in a way that incorporates the mysteries and miracles of collective action: the result of different people meeting together. In turn, it raises practical questions. For example: How should meetings be structured to give a voice to those who are generally heard little or not at all? Which visions of a policy do we decide to dismiss, consciously or not, when we participate in meetings? And which other policies might we discover by looking at meetings differently?
Sophie Thunus is a member of the Health and Society Institute (IRSS), UCLouvain, Belgium. She is professor of management of healthcare services at the Faculty of Public Health, UCLouvain. She received her PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the University of Liège in 2015. Her Post-Doc research focused on the role of inter-organisational meetings in health and mental healthcare organisations. Her current research interests include (mental) healthcare networks and reforms, inter-organisational and -professional meetings and learning, coordination and communication tools.
Image credit: iStock. Used with permission.
Read the original research in Evidence & Policy:
Thunus, S. (2022). Meeting in brackets: how mental health policy travels through meetings. Evidence & Policy, 10.1332/174426421X16595409252858.
If you enjoyed this blog post, you may also be interested to read:
Using knowledge brokering to produce community-generated evidence
Applying the rational model of evidence-informed policy and practice in the real world
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed on this blog site are solely those of the original blog post authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the Policy Press and/or any/all contributors to this site.
Evidence & Policy Blog 