Narrating Community: The Creation of Social Structure in Alcoholics Anonymous Through the Performance of Autobiography

The sharing of life stories is the most important social practice among members of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Close attention to autobiographic story-telling in AA provides clues as to how AA works to heal alcoholism by creating a community of recovering alcoholics. This paper examines three major ways that AA stories create community. First, in the course of the performance of autobiographic narratives, expert AA speakers allow create social structure between themselves and their audience. Second, proper AA stories are the means by which AA members acquire and maintain their identities as recovering alcoholics. In this manner, story-listening is just as important as story-telling. Third, through the invocation of strong feeling, both tragic and humorous, AA story-tellers create a kind of intimacy based on shared emotion.