Ritual practice in a social model recovery home

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
In this article we analyze ritual and ceremony in a residential social model program for women alcoholics and addicts. This social model program, “Twelve Willows,” relies on certain forms of ritual in treatment. Qualitative data were collected by a team of ethnographers, and our analysis is informed by anthropological analyses of ritual, ritual symbolism, and ceremony (Ortner, 1990; Turner, 1967) and by research on ritual practices in families with histories of alcoholism (Bennett, Wolin, Reiss et al., 1987; Wolin and Bennett, 1984). Following Ortner's (1990) lead, we argue that analysis of the rituals and ceremony at Twelve Willows may “open” or make available to outsiders the culture and social life of the program, providing a window on important values and structures of this particular social model program. We also propose that the practice of rituals at Twelve Willows may facilitate the recovery process and offer instructive models for the treatment community as a whole.