Your Own Personal Illness: Interpretation through the Spiritual Malady in Alcoholics Anonymous

Some Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) members conceive of the fundamental problem they share as a “spiritual malady.” Based on fieldwork among three AA groups in Nova Scotia, Canada, this article advances an ethnographic description of the concept. Through a close examination of how the spiritual malady wa...

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Bibliographische Detailangaben
1. VerfasserIn: Parsons, Alastair (VerfasserIn)
Medienart: Elektronisch Aufsatz
Sprache:Englisch
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Veröffentlicht: Wiley-Blackwell 2022
In: Ethos
Jahr: 2022, Band: 50, Heft: 1, Seiten: 90-107
weitere Schlagwörter:B private and public symbols
B Addiction
B Selfhood
B Alcoholics Anonymous
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Zusammenfassung:Some Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) members conceive of the fundamental problem they share as a “spiritual malady.” Based on fieldwork among three AA groups in Nova Scotia, Canada, this article advances an ethnographic description of the concept. Through a close examination of how the spiritual malady was interpreted by my interlocutors, I propose that the concept creates a cultural framework for the articulation of subjectivities and the interpretation of psychologies. I argue that it exists through a reciprocity of private and public meanings that are more the product of interactions between AA members than the learning and repetition of a formal ideology. This analysis becomes a means of exploring the agency of AA members as producers of meaningful representations of the challenges they feel they hold in common.
ISSN:1548-1352
Enthält:Enthalten in: Ethos
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/etho.12330