45 pages • 1 hour read
Priya ParkerThe Art of Gathering
Nonfiction | 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.
Chapter 7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “Cause Good Controversy”
Expanding on the claim that sharing revealing or even dark stories can be beneficial to gatherings, Chapter 7 assets that introducing controversy can actually deepen an event’s purpose rather than destroy it. Parker again criticizes the rules of etiquette, which for the last several centuries have explicitly discouraged people from talking about certain topics (like sex, politics, or religion). Yet a side effect of the modern age’s fear of controversy is dullness. She asks readers, “When was the last time you heard a panel moderator ask a tough question instead of tossing softballs? When was the last time you saw a couple of panelists truly argue about something worth arguing about?” (228).
Parker tells the story of a meeting of a powerful architectural firm she moderated, intended to decide the company’s future direction in bold terms. Instead, the participants timidly stayed in safe territory, avoiding strong disagreements out of courtesy. To save the event, Parker revamped it as a mock wrestling match and established some pop-up rules; participants were divided into opposing teams and would have to choose sides on issues, for instance. To keep things playful and engaging, Parker even played the Rocky theme music.
Controversy is meaningful when it exists within the controlled context of a gathering and not simply for its own sake. Rules like those of the mock wrestling match make the boundaries of a gathering explicit, so that the controversy is clearly related to it and less likely to be taken personally. Parker concedes, “I will be the first one to tell you [ritualized controversy] is not for every event” (235), emphasizing that succeeding in this effort takes careful guidance.
Parker advises organizers to pinpoint what seems to be the hidden controversy in a discussion by noting what topics people are tiptoeing around. Their job is to then steer participants toward the controversy, encouraging them to go “below the iceberg” (242). Nevertheless, Parker concedes that stirring controversy is not appropriate for every event, and she encourages organizers to use their best judgment in deciding how to proceed. She paraphrases an acquaintance, Ida Benedetto, who hosts deliberately transgressive events and consistently asks “herself two questions: What is the gift? And what is the risk?” (243).
Chapter 7 Analysis
If Chapter 6 urged organizers to encourage their guests to share personal, serious insights, then Chapter 7 takes this even further by recommending they be open to controversy. This assertion makes the difference between Parker and other authorities on gatherings even starker. Whereas the traditional rules of rhetoric explicitly urge hosts and guests to steer away from potentially controversial topics like politics, sex, and religion, Parker views lively disagreement as a positive force. Her method of critique is direct, modeling for readers what a willingness to engage in meaningful debate looks like.
Once again, Parker raises a point that many readers are likely to be skeptical about. Well aware of this, the evidence that Parker brings in to support her claim is often personal, such as the anecdote of her work with the architectural firm. The personal evidence provided by such anecdotes lends credibility and authority to Parker, showing she has tested her ideas. This, in turn, makes it more likely that readers will accept her claim about the benefits of controversy.
Sensitive as she is to potential skeptics, Parker is not timid about claiming that controversy can uphold a gathering’s purpose, challenging conference organizers and panel moderators not to throw out “softballs,” easy questions that fail to substantively engage with ideas. Her implicit assumption is that pushing the envelope by inviting participants in a gathering to engage with points they do not agree on will cause them to arrive at new ideas, new connections, and new relationships. The promise Parker argues productive controversy can deliver is another sign that she views gatherings as means of change, as potentially transformative rather than mere entertainment or business status quo.
In her discussion of controversy, however, Parker also relies on a sense of humor to balance things out. This helps explain that she does not view controversy as disagreement for disagreement’s sake or as innately combative in nature. For example, in the anecdote about the architectural firm, she describes the artificially imposed debate as a “cage match” and plays the theme from Rocky, adding a hint of silliness to suggest that the productive controversy ought to be taken seriously but not personally. Parker also implies that using pop-up rules in situations like this contextualizes controversy, limiting it to the situation at hand to some extent, thereby making it less threatening.
On the other hand, Parker tempers the enthusiasm of her ideas with a healthy respect for organizers as experts of their particular contexts, giving them freedom to decide what is best rather than imposing strict rules. She concedes, “I will be the first one to tell you it is not for every event. In many cases, doing something out of the ordinary isn’t a great idea” (235). As a result, Parker’s discussion of controversy provides one of the book’s few moments when she does not think that the same principles apply to the widest possible scope of gatherings. Nevertheless, her advice to readers shows that even the decision to omit controversy from a gathering is always made with the goal of supporting the most important principle, its purpose.
