James A. Holstein is Associate Professor of Sodology, Marquette University. His research brings an ethnomethodologically-informed constructionist perspective to a variety of topics, including mental illness, sodal problems, family, the life course, and dispute processing. Dr. Holstein is coeditor of the research annual, Perspectives on Social Problems, and coauthor (with J. Gubrium) of What Is Family? and Constructing the Life Course. In addition, he is coeditor (with Gale Miller) of Reconsidering Social Constructionism and Constructionist Controversies (both: Aldine de Gruyter, New York).

• Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Interpretive Practice and Involuntary Commitment -- Perspectives on Mental Illness -- Reality as an Interactional Accomplishment -- The Labeling Controversy -- Constitutive Analysis -- Studying Interpretive Practice -- Notes -- 2. Analyzing Involuntary Commitment -- A History of Involuntary Commitment -- Contemporary Involuntary Commitment Laws -- Research Settings -- Commitment Hearings in Brief -- Methodological Approach -- Notes -- 3. Decision-Making in Context: Outlook and Orientations -- Contingent Factors and Commitment Decisions -- Background Assumptions and Orientations -- Psychiatry and the Law -- Danger or Disability? -- Notes -- 4. The Sequential Organization of Commitment Hearings -- Delimiting Legal Proceedings: The Summons -- Producing Psychiatric Assessments -- Organizing the Patient's Rebuttal -- Attorneys' Comments and Summations -- Resolution -- Interpretive Issues for Involuntary Commitment -- Notes -- 5. The Conversational Organization of Competence and Incompetence -- Interactional Competence and Crazy Talk -- Organizing Interactional Competence -- Organizing Incompetence -- Incompetence, Normalcy, and Conversational Practice -- Notes -- 6. Troubles, Tenability, and the Placement of Insanity -- Tenability and Troubles -- Managing Basic Necessities -- The Presence of Competent Caretakers -- Cooperation with a Treatment Regime -- Placing Insanity: Matching Needs to -- Accommodations -- Accomplishing Tenability -- Tenability and Accountability -- Notes -- 7. Mental Illness Assumptions -- Mental Illness Assumptions as Interpretive Schemes -- Mental Illness and Credibility -- Contextualizing Patients' Performance -- Suspending the Assumption -- Tenability and Mental Illness -- Notes -- 8. Constructing Tenability: Interpretive Practice in Cultural Context -- Producing People -- Using Normal Forms -- Accomplishing Accommodations: Matching People with Places -- Description, Rhetoric, and Argumentation -- Notes -- 9. Action That Divides -- Mental Illness and Community Custody -- Accountability Structures -- Rationalizing Compassion, Domesticating Control -- Notes -- Appendices -- Appendix 1: Patient Polly Brown -- Appendix 2: Patient Regina Farmer -- Appendix 3: Patient Jason Andro -- References -- Index.