ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to treat "certification practices" of the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center (SPC) as an occasion for reflections about practical actions and practical sociological reasoning in order to formulate several of their features as problematic sociological phenomena. Insofar as these phenomena exhibit characteristic properties of their own, they constitute a legitimate area of inquiry in themselves. The certification practices of the Suicide Prevention Center provide an experience with which these phenomena may be examined.
