45 pages • 1 hour read
Priya ParkerThe Art of Gathering
Priya ParkerNonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Introduction-Chapter 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Introduction Summary
Parker begins her book with a clear statement of her position, remarking that most gatherings of all kinds—from boardroom meetings to dinner parties—are unsuccessful and disappointing. Nevertheless, our habits and traditions spur us to continue repeating the same ineffective strategies for gathering. She argues that “[w]e reduce the question of what to do with people to a question of what to do about things: PowerPoints, invitations, AV equipment, cutlery, refreshments” (x). Parker sees a fundamental problem with this. Refusing to accept that gatherings will inevitably be dull and fruitless, she has written this book as a practical guide for readers. Parker asserts that we need to turn attention to the purpose and form of gatherings, writing that “the way a group is gathered […] determines what happens in it and how successful it is” (xiii).
Parker’s introduction also explains why she is an expert on the art of gathering. Having grown up in a multiracial, multicultural home and studied conflict resolution, she is poised to offer realistic, well-informed advice on productively bringing people together in shared settings. Finally, Parker outlines the structure of her book, which mirrors the sequence of planning, starting, and ending a gathering. She stresses that readers should feel free to be their own experts and modify her guidelines to suit their needs.
Chapter 1 Summary: “Decide Why You’re Really Gathering”
To be successfully conceived and executed, a gathering must have a specific and unique purpose. Fixation on a gathering’s external details, like seating charts, schedules, and meals, can cause people to skip over the step of defining its purpose. As a result, “[w]e end up gathering in ways that don’t serve us, or not connecting in ways we ought to” (1), suggesting the paramount importance of pinning down the reason for bringing people together. Parker stresses that a gathering’s purpose must be specific and not simply a category like birthday party, networking event, or business meeting. Categories masquerade as purposes but as a rule are too general to pinpoint the true meaning of a gathering.
To illustrate the importance of a gathering’s purpose, Parker provides anecdotes, like the story of the Red Hook Community Justice Center in Brooklyn, which set out to revamp the nature of criminal legal proceedings. While a typical courtroom features an imposing judge seated high up, presiding over a dark space divided into sides for prosecution and defense, Red Hook is comprised of a collaborative team of judges, social workers, defendants, and others, who meet in a light-filled space to work together. The center attributes its success to having consciously asked itself “a basic question: What is the purpose of the justice system we want to see? And what would a court look like if it were built according to that purpose?” (4). By thoughtfully centering its purpose on serving defendants as complete individuals worthy of holistic support, Red Hook’s gatherings have decreased recidivism rates and led to other improvements.
Parker’s examples stressing the importance of defining purpose extend to personal gatherings as well, including everything from parties to weddings to recurring work meetings. The purpose of these more personal and everyday events, she argues, should not be overlooked any more than the goal of a high-level political meeting: “[w]hen you skip asking yourself what the purpose of your birthday party is in this specific year, for where you are at in this present moment in your life, for example, you forsake an opportunity” (8). Even something as common as a birthday can be an occasion for assessing one’s life and purpose.
The first chapter closes with Parker’s list of “Some Practical Tips on Crafting Your Purpose.” She encourages readers to be assertive and take some risks in defining a purpose. She writes that a quick test to see if a purpose is meaningful is to ask, “Does it stick its neck out a little bit? Does it take a stand? Is it willing to unsettle some of the guests (or maybe the host)? Does it refuse to be everything to everyone?” (16-17). By being specific, a purpose separates itself from a general category. By being disputable—something not everyone will agree with—a purpose may not please everyone, but it will certainly be well defined.
Introduction-Chapter 1 Analysis
Parker presents The Art of Gathering as a practical work, “part journey and part guidebook” (xiii) with insights for readers to apply to their own situations. As the Introduction notes, the book’s structure is designed to walk readers, chapter by chapter, through the stages of planning and executing an event. To establish her authority on the topic, Parker devotes space in the Introduction to describing her work in conflict resolution and as a consultant on a wide range of meetings, conferences, and other events. At the same time, she also provides personal details related to her expertise, including a description of her childhood efforts to mediate between the highly divergent cultures of her Indian mother and American father.
These details serve the rhetorical function of gaining the reader’s trust. Yet by stressing her expertise in complex areas like conflict resolution and race relations even in a work said to be useful for planning events as humble as a birthday party, Parker also implicitly distinguishes herself from authorities on etiquette and other experts who focus on the external aspects of gatherings (like decorations, menus, and background music). Later in The Art of Gathering, Parker will make this distinction more explicit.
The Introduction and Chapter 1 also exemplify the method of The Art Gathering, which incorporates anecdotal evidence from a wide range of situations, most often from personal experience or from the lives of her acquaintances. These anecdotes establish the wide scope of what an anecdote is, in Parker’s view, encompassing everything from the work of a justice center, to high-level business and political meetings, to dinner parties with intimate friends. This wide scope democratizes the concept of gathering, implying that there are insights to gain from all types, that all types stand to improve, and that no particular type is guaranteed to succeed simply because of the stature of its setting or attendees.
It is already clear that Parker’s approach to thinking about gatherings is analytical and philosophical. Thus, it is no surprise that the book declares at the outset that the fundamental element of any successful gathering is its purpose. The first chapter’s emphasis is primarily practical, as Parker claims; it even closes with a set of tips for deciding on a gathering’s purpose. Yet when Parker likens a gathering’s purpose to a “bouncer,” she foreshadows the assertions in Chapter 2 that the purpose should be exclusive (31). Utilizing the metaphor of a strong figure whose role is to keep people out of a location braces readers for the following chapter’s claim that to be purposeful, a gathering must leave some people out.
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