Territory, Identity, and Conflict in a Public Meeting: A Natural History Approach

This paper examines the natural history of a public meeting, recognizing the importance of the unfolding of events as key to understanding the relationships and issues germane to human relating. As a method, the natural history approach is employed through reducing permanent records of interaction to a statistical record in order to examine the relative involvement of participants in a public meeting. The statistical presentation of data points to a particular moment of interaction that stands out in the meeting structure as unique. This moment is analyzed and an approach to understanding a conflict based on identities of place is developed.