Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Adolescent Rehabilitation in an American Residential Treatment Center

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Under the supervision of Dr. Rebecca J. Lester, graduate student Katherine Hejtmanek will undertake a study of the relationship between American cultural values and the process of rehabilitation at a residential treatment facility that treats primarily low-income and minority youth. Residential treatment has a long history in American society for housing and treating youth considered to be socially inadequate. Today, it is the final and most drastic social service provision for two hundred thousand marginalized youth before they meet the challenges of adulthood. This research project investigates how adolescents deemed wayward are rehabilitated to become adults who are considered decent. The researcher will undertake a case study of a specific facility and its programs. She will examine the relationship between the program and broader cultural values and social debates about mainstream American notions of good personhood. Guiding research questions include: How do staff members implement the center's official model of moral responsibility in daily life as they go about the activities and interactions that comprise rehabilitation? and how do staff and residents determine if and when the residents have learned and internalized this model? To answer these questions, the researcher will live and work at the home. She will use five field research methods: participant observation, focus group interviews with staff members and residents, semi-structured interviews with staff members, life history interviews with residents, and archival and literature research. This project will contribute to social science in two ways. First, it will make a methodological contribution by utilizing utilizes adolescents' own experiences of their social rehabilitation as a critical source of data. Second, this project will document the process by which how macro-level cultural values, micro-level therapeutic techniques, and individual-level experiences inform each other to construct social life. The results of this study will contribute to understanding the social embeddedness of other social rehabilitation programs for excluded youth in various cultural contexts. Finally, this project contributes to the anthropological training of the graduate student.