“One Among Many”: Piety Reconstruction in 12-Step Recovery Groups

Abstract

This article applies Kenneth Burke’s concept of piety to an evaluation of nine recovery stories from members of four different 12-step fellowships. In this theoretical context, recovery can be explained as a process of adopting and remaking pious systems. All nine recovery stories follow a similar pattern: (1) identifying difference and similarity in the community; (2) letting go of old pieties; (3) adopting group piety; and (4) inventing and remaking individual systems of piety. This analysis investigates how individual and group pieties interact to strengthen or threaten individual recovery and group cohesion.

Notes

1 Many thanks go to the two anonymous RR reviewers of this manuscript, Editor-in-Chief Elise Hurley, and Scott Weedon for their time, care, and generosity through each draft of this article.

2 The recordings I analyzed are different from social media or forum posts in that they were published as episodes of podcasts or on public YouTube channels curated for an intentionally wide audience of people inside and outside 12-step groups. The speakers granted permission to 12-step-affiliated groups to edit and publish their stories in a public venue.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michelle Cowan

Michelle Cowan is a PhD candidate at Texas Tech University, where she teaches composition and technical communication. Her research focuses on rhetorics of health and medicine, corporate discourse, and assessment practices in the workplace and the classroom. In the fall of 2023, she will begin an appointment at Washington and Lee University as an Assistant Professor of Business Administration.