Help-Search Practices in Rehabilitation Team Meetings: A Sacksian Analysis

Using Harvey Sacks’s concept of membership categorization devices (MCDs), this article examines the help-search sequences in which Japanese rehabilitation team members use a set of categories to locate the availability of stroke family caregivers. Specifically, based on an analysis of audiovisual data from rehabilitation team conferences in Japan, the article illustrates the ways in which participants at the meetings: (1) evaluate the expectable behaviors of various category incumbents; (2) classify which category of person is proper to turn to for help; and (3) arrive at the conclusion that no one is available, and so the patient must be institutionalized. Analysis shows that participants routinely choose co-resident family members to fulfill the caregiver position. However, the position is not guaranteed unless the selected incumbent can satisfy additional criteria, especially physical strength and time availability. By exploring the ways in which participants use categories to negotiate discharge destinations, the article adds to Sacks’s analysis by illustrating methodical activities for deciding whether someone is unavailable to help. Moreover, it considers the applicability of Sacks’s notion of MCDs to Japanese data.