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Using in‐depth interviews with naturalized U.S. citizens and immigrants as well as autoethnographic data, the author examines the stigma management strategies Middle Eastern Americans deploy, particularly in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks. He applies the concepts of interpretive practice and accounting to narratives of disrupted encounters in which Middle Eastern Americans were prompted to explain their identities, and classifies the stigma management strategies this group utilizes into five types of accounting: humorous, educational, defiant, cowering, and passing. This article evaluates the strengths and drawbacks of each accounting type for combating stigma and discusses how these findings inform existing scholarship on the social construction of deviant identities and their management in everyday life.

Using data from participant observations, shelter documents, and intake interviews, this article examines the social construction of service-worthy clients at an emergency shelter for the homeless. The concepts of narrative editing and client work are applied to underscore how staff-client interactions lead to organizationally useful accounts of homelessness. Analysis of the data reveals four narrative editing styles: collaborative, directive, confrontational, and dismissive. These findings empirically demonstrate variations in how service worthiness is achieved, or denied. It is argued that the homeless profile is not unilaterally and uniformly dictated by institutional agents. Rather, under the organizational auspices of the shelter, clients and staff are jointly involved in constructing the local relevance of homelessness.