Whose higher power? Criminalized women confront the "Twelve steps"

Susan Sered; Maureen Norton-Hawk

doi:10.1177/1557085111420557

Whose higher power? Criminalized women confront the "Twelve steps"

Susan Sered, Maureen Norton-Hawk

Suffolk University

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

13 Scopus citations

Abstract

Drawing on 3 years of fieldwork with a community of criminalized women in eastern Massachusetts, this article explores their ambivalent, often negative, relationship with and feelings about Alcoholics Anonymous/Narcotics Anonymous (AA/NA). We suggest that coerced participation in AA/NA undermines any potential value that these programs may have for other types of participants and that the Twelve Step ideology of personal responsibility and turning oneself over to a Higher Power fails to resonate for women who are homeless, poor, incarcerated, abused, and have had their children taken from them.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	308-332
Number of pages	25
Journal	Feminist Criminology
Volume	6
Issue number	4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/1557085111420557
State	Published - Oct 2011
Externally published	Yes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This article was funded from Suffolk University through a Summer Stipend.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This article was funded from Suffolk University through a Summer Stipend.

Funders	Funder number
Suffolk University

Keywords

ethnographic research
reentry from prison to community
religion
social constructions of female deviance
women

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Cite this

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Whose higher power? Criminalized women confront the "Twelve steps"

Abstract

Bibliographical note

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Keywords

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