The communal construction of the ?outsider? in a Quaker community in Costa Rica

Abstract

This paper attempts to capture the process of exclusion in a Quaker, rural farming community in the rain forest mountains of Costa Rica. The “outsider” is defined as a member of a close community, whose voice is not part of the communal dialogue. The “silenced” voice is investigated through the lives of four members — an authoritarian founding father in a community of the fraternal, an entrepreneur and his wife among the uncommercial, and an inarticulate man among the persuasive.