Images of the Twelve-Step Model, and Sex and Love Addiction in an Alcohol Intervention Group for Black Women

1996 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Flynn Saulnier
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Specific Problem ◽  
Intervention Group ◽  
Twelve Step ◽  
Alcohol Intervention ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Twelve Step Programs ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Step Model

The Alcoholics Anonymous twelve-step model was developed to help a specific population of white, middle-class, heterosexual men with a specific problem: alcoholism. As the program is applied to a wider variety of issues, with diverse populations, the model's generalizability has been called into question. Its applicability to outgroups is, at best, uncertain. At worst, the addiction model and its notion of powerlessness could have serious negative consequences. Until now, there has been scant research on the effect of using the program with marginalized people. Because of difficulties accessing these populations, the present study used innovative qualitative research methods to answer questions about the consequences of membership in twelve-step programs for a marginalized group: African-American women. This paper documents some of the problems that can occur when a program designed to solve a specific problem among a hegemonic group is used to address everyday activities of marginalized people.

The community of Black women physicians, 1864–1941: Trends in background, education, and training

2021 ◽  
pp. 007327532098741
Author(s):  
Margaret Vigil-Fowler ◽  
Sukumar Desai
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
School Attendance ◽  
White Men ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Women In Science ◽  
Women Physicians ◽  
Internship Experience ◽  
Second World

We identified nearly 180 Black women who earned medical degrees prior to the start of the Second World War and found information regarding their family and social connections, premedical and medical educations, and internship experience or lack thereof for many of these women. Through their collective history, we observed large-scale trends, especially regarding the importance of “separatist” medical education and declining medical school attendance among African American women in the 1910s as medicine became an increasingly exclusionary profession. While our research uncovered trends specific to Black women physicians, the implications of our research can be applied far more widely to other historically marginalized scientific practitioners. This research reminds us of the longstanding and shifting presence of Black women in science and medicine, despite the enduring popular belief that white men represent who participates in science, both historically and today.

scholarly journals Working the Self: Truth-Telling in the Practice of Alcoholics Anonymous

Human Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fredrik Palm
Keyword(s):  
Alcoholics Anonymous ◽  
The Self ◽  
Twelve Step ◽  
Truth Telling ◽  
Twelve Step Programs ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Close Study ◽  
Care Of Self

AbstractThis article interrogates twelve step practice within Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) from the perspective of Foucault’s later work on governance, truth-telling and subjectivity. Recent critical studies of addiction tend to view self-help cultures like that of AA and related twelve step programs as integral parts of contemporary power/knowledge complexes, and thus as agents of the modern “will to knowledge” that Foucault often engages with. In line with the widespread Foucauldian critique of governmentality, addiction self-help culture is thus conceived as one that primarily reproduces abstract, neoliberal norms on health and subjectivity. The argument put forward in this article aims to upset this framework attending to a number of features of twelve step practice that, arguably, bear striking resemblances to Foucault’s later discussions of ethics, care of self and truth-telling. In this, it is suggested that a close study of AA practices, might interrupt assumptions about contemporary addiction discourse and its relationship to issues of truth and power often reproduced in Foucauldian critiques.

scholarly journals Sassy Sasha?: The intersectionality of (im)politeness and sociolinguistics

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Denise Troutman
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Social Construct ◽  
Women's Voices ◽  
Black Females ◽  
Online Assessments ◽  
General Linguistic

Abstract This article focuses on intersections of race, gender, class, and (im)politeness within the African American speech community (AASC). Although general linguistic theorizing aims at universalizing (im)politeness, ultimately identifying common components within human (im)politeness systems worldwide, African American perspectives have not been interjected within that broader theorizing. Thus, I examine (im)politeness from the perspective of African Americans with a focus on females’ linguistic and nonlinguistic behaviors. A plethora of work examines, challenges, and refutes stereotypical gender. I explore facets of the stereotypical, particularly as applied to Black females with the aim of broadening understandings of (im)politeness based on cultural variation. Specifically, I examine sassy as a social construct when applied to Black women in U.S. contexts, especially two Black women’s online assessments of sassy performativity by Sasha Obama, as a vehicle for allowing Black women’s voices and experiences to enter into theory-making. The analysis is interpretative and idiographic. The two African American women bloggers’ words and meanings suggest that (im)politeness within the AASC resides in sociolinguistics, not pragmatics. As a result of the analysis, I suggest that (im)politeness theorizing could pay attention to the social embodiedness of human polite and impolite behaviors. This, in part, constitutes the sociolinguistics of (im)politeness.

Determinants of Racial Disparities in Female Incarceration Rates, 2000–2018

2021 ◽  
pp. 003464462110510
Author(s):  
Samuel L. Myers ◽  
William J. Sabol ◽  
Man Xu
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Racial Disparities ◽  
African American Women ◽  
White Women ◽  
National Research Council ◽  
The United States ◽  
White Female ◽  
Opioid Use ◽  
Incarceration Rate ◽  
Women In Prison

In The Growth of Incarceration in the United States, the National Research Council documents the large and persistent racial disparities in imprisonment that accompanied the more than quadrupling of the U.S. incarceration rate since the 1980s. Largely unnoticed by policy makers and opinion leaders in recent years is an unprecedented decrease in the number of African American women incarcerated at the same time that the number of white women in prison has grown to new heights. The result of these recent changes is a near convergence in black-white female incarceration rates from 2000 to 2016. In some states, the changes occurred abruptly and almost instantaneously. In other states, the convergence has been gradual. We find that changes in the population composition—the fraction of the population that is black—was the major contributor to the decline in the disparity among women. We also find that race-specific differences in drug overdose deaths stemming from the recent increases in opioid use lowered the disparity by increasing the white female imprisonment rate and lowering it for black women.

Substance-Related Cravings and Relapses: Clinical Implications

1998 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nady el-Guebaly ◽  
David Hodgins
Keyword(s):  
Family Involvement ◽  
Relapse Prevention ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Clinical Implications ◽  
Twelve Step ◽  
Twelve Step Programs ◽  
Treatment Techniques ◽  
Substance Dependent ◽  
Cue Exposure Treatment ◽  
Relapse Patterns

Objective: To review the implications of current research on clinical practice. Method: An examination of the literature over the last 10 years and the data from our own study group. Results: A synopsis of current psychobiological and psychological conceptual underpinnings of the nature and process of cravings and relapses among substance-dependent individuals is presented. The biopsychosocial dimensions of the clinical assessment of craving components, relapse patterns, and predictors, including relevant instruments, are explored. The panoply of management strategies for cravings and relapses encompasses cue exposure treatment techniques, relapse prevention approaches, anticraving and psychotropic medication, family involvement, and twelve-step programs. Conclusion: A clinician's familiarity with these strategies should contribute significantly to the transformation of the sense of failure engendered by a patient's relapse into a constructive challenge and opportunity.

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