Court-Ordered Insanity: Interpretive Practice and Involuntary Commitment (Social Problems & Social Issues)

This book analyzes how hearing participants construct and organize arguments that are legally, psychiatrically, and practically accountable. It argues that commitment decisions orient to the "tenability" of situations that patients pose as alternatives to hospitalization.

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).