Dissertation Research: Changing Views of Social Roles among Clients in a Residential Addiction Treatment Program

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Case Western Reserve University doctoral student Allison Schlosser, guided by Dr. Lee Hoffer, will undertake research on how socio-political inclusion is mediated by health-related power and knowledge for clients in addiction treatment. This study examines emergent forms of citizenship among clients in clinically hybrid addiction treatment that combines biomedical technologies, mutual-aid, and various psychotherapies. This research situates client experience in relation to values of economic efficiency, individual choice, and self-responsibility. Schlosser will conduct 19 months of field research at a residential addiction treatment facility and the surrounding community in a post-Industrial city in the Midwestern United States. She will focus on how clients' citizenship is constructed in relation to clinically hybrid addiction treatment and in post-treatment life. This study is grounded in a longitudinal ethnographic design including participant-observation and repeated in-depth interviews with randomly selected clients (N=40) during treatment and focused ethnography (ethnographic shadowing, informal interviews, and in-depth interviews) with a sub-sample of clients (n=12) for 6 months of post-treatment. Analyses will focus on how diversely positioned clients (by gender, self-reported race, and mandated/voluntary treatment status) experience treatment and how their engagement with various forms of treatment relates to their socio-political inclusion. This research contributes to anthropological and related social theory examining how novel forms of citizenship emerge in the context of complex health interventions that are shaped by broader cultural and economic trends. By contributing to our understanding of how shifts in the structure and provision of health services in a influence the socio-political inclusion of the most marginal in society, this study will also provide essential knowledge to inform health services and public policy. Funding this research also supports the education of a social scientist