Graduation Year

2026

Date of Submission

4-2026

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE)

Reader 1

Michael J. Fortner

Abstract

This thesis uses ethnographic and hermeneutical methods to unravel the social life of long-time and ‘successful’ participants in Alcoholics Anonymous. It focuses on the transformations concerning questions around meaning, identity, relationality, subjectivity, morals, ethics, affect, spirituality, and textualism. It takes up lines of inquiry around these debates and categories for understanding the human condition of alcoholics: Can we consider ‘recovery’ within the normative frameworks of freedom, agency, and liberation? Are alcoholics (re)interpreting and experimenting around the program as an expression of resistance? How does Alcoholics Anonymous shift and (re)shape our sense of community, virtue, God, and the self? I make a radical attempt to pivot away from viewing the modality of Alcoholics Anonymous through the parochial lenses of ideology, structuralism, and power. I argue that, despite all odds, these alcoholics are expressing themselves and (re)working their socialities on radical terms through a defyingly traditionalist religious program.

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This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.

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