The expressions and transformations of identity in Alcoholics Anonymous: A multimethod study of individual, group and organization

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is an organization in the identity business. The business of this organization is expressly about changing the behavior of alcoholics and the way they (and others) think about themselves. What this means is that identity is the process and product of the organization. Alcoholics Anonymous is an organization that changes many people's lives by helping individual alcoholics recover from the disease of alcoholism. Recovery in this sense is much more than not drinking it encompasses a holistic change in the way alcoholics think and act. When alcoholics come to this organization they are presented with a program of recovery designed to help them learn about the disease of alcoholism and the organization's suggested program of recovery. As a result of not drinking and following this suggested program of recovery, members can effectively change their lives.The purpose of this study is to understand the processes and importance of same-sex, specifically male, AA meetings in helping alcoholics make the transition from alcoholic to recovering alcoholic. This meeting (in the sense of a group and an ongoing set of sessions) provides a place and process for alcoholics to negotiate individual, group, and organizational identities. Participant observation and ethnographic fieldnotes are used to explore the interactive nature of the meetings in context and rhetorical analysis of formal organizational documents examines the strategies of the organization to induce member identifications. Taken together, these forms of analysis allow for an in-depth understanding of how the organization facilitates identity change, how alcoholics draw from organizational resources in meetings, and how members use AA meetings to negotiate identity change. In addition, this study seeks to explain how alcoholics perform identity work in AA meetings. Specifically, this study adds to the literature of organizational identification and identity work as each of these theories and their intersection provide powerful tools to explore and understand the processes of identity transformation in Alcoholics Anonymous.