The quest for contented sobriety: a dramaturgical analysis of recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis examines the phenomenon of recovery as it is experienced and understood by members of Alcoholics Anonymous in Newfoundland and Labrador. Recovery involves more than just changes in the brains and bodies of the addicted person. It is more than changes in positive affect, mood or personality structure. Recovery is more than the gradual modifications of behaviour associated with learning models. In this dissertation, I present a new and alternative interpretation of recovery by applying insights from the fields of ritual theory and dramaturgy. A qualitative research design, using participant observation and in-depth interviews, were used to generate detailed descriptions of the social processes involved in recovery. Data generated from these methods have yielded new insights into the inner workings of AA not yet described in the existing sociological literature. Data from this study reveal recovery as a dynamic social process wherein the novice AA member, referred to in this study as the penitent, experiences dramatic personal change and transformation through the twelve step program. The experience of working the twelve steps is presented in this study as a personal rite of passage involving three phases of transformation: separation, liminality and incorporation or aggregation. At each stage of this transformational process the AA member must follow certain emotion display rules and learn how to work with others in the home group to become a contributing member of a performance team. The emotions and behaviours associated with recovery are thus strongly influenced by social factors which are unique to the subculture of AA. Findings from this study have the potential to flesh out and expand conceptual models of recovery and to better inform social policy on addictions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.009 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".