Recovering Selves

SUMMARY

This is an ethnographic study of a therapeutic-community drug treatment program comprised of mostly court-mandated clients. It explores how women interact with treatment practices and the language of recovery. I argue that deep and inherent contradictions exist between treatment practice and the needs of drug-using women. In particular I investigate the gender and race implications of drug treatment as a moral project aimed at self-reinvention. I also examine tensions between normalizing power and punishment in the therapeutic community. Treatment is analyzed in the therapeutic community as reflective of broader cultural and neoliberal values that privilege notions of family, community, and responsibility. I claim that the treatment ideal of the self-reliant, active citizen is profoundly problematic for women and mothers

Key Words:

• Drug treatment
• therapeutic community
• gender
• race
• social control
• punishment
• neoliberalism