CITATION AND COPYRIGHT INFORMATION:
Cite as: Clark, K. D. (1999). A communication-as-procedure perspective on a women’s spirituality group: A Sense-Making and ethnographic exploration of communicative proceduring in feminist small group process. The Electronic Journal of Communication [On-line serial] 9 (2, 3, & 4).
© The Electronic Journal of Communication (1999).

ABSTRACT:
Amid calls for more research into the communication phenomena of naturalistic or bona fide small groups, this article provides an exemplar of how Sense-Making Methodology was used to examine small group communicative practices. The research project described here applied Sense-Making’s meta-theory and methods for framing research questions, collecting data, and analyzing results, combining these with ethnographic participant observation in a deep and holistic exploration of group processes during a six-month period in the life of an on-going woman’s group focusing on issues of religion, spirituality, and feminist practice. This project focused on studying communication as procedure, or proceduring. Sense-Making’s highly meta-theoretic perspective was used conjointly with an inductive excavation into the literature on feminist group processes in order to derive a communication-as-procedure analytic which was, in turn, used to assess the actual processes of a women’s group. A major conclusion was that only when group process was examined as both individual and collective step-takings in specific moments in time-space did the gap between the ideal feminist group process and the actuality become clarified.

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