Circling Science

Making Silence Together: Collaboration in the Silent Gatherings of Quakers

Daniel Steinbock · 2012

Evidence
Qualitative study
Kind
PhD thesis
Method
Ethnography and video analysis of silence, movement and speech in Quaker gatherings
Sample
One focal Quaker community; six recorded Quaker Dialogues alongside wider fieldwork
Published
Stanford University
Practices
Quaker meeting

Adjacent

Studies a related practice or mechanism, without testing Circling.

An ethnographic dissertation describes Quaker silence as something participants make together through embodied attention, movement and occasional speech.

What it doesn’t show

The detailed analysis centres on one community, and the six recorded sessions used Quaker Dialogue, a small-group Quaker format that the researcher convened and set the questions for, not the weekly Meeting for Worship itself. The account does not establish health benefits or show that the same patterns hold across Quaker meetings or other silent groups.

Summary based on the dissertation’s abstract, fieldwork and recording methods, and selected analytic chapters.

Links

Cite

Steinbock, D. (2012). Making Silence Together: Collaboration in the Silent Gatherings of Quakers [Doctoral dissertation, Stanford University]. https://www.steinbock.org/pubs/steinbock_dissertation.pdf