Call for Proposals: Special issue of Implicit Religion

Call for Proposals:

Special issue of Implicit Religion

Religion, Spirituality and Addiction Recovery

Guest Editors: Dr Wendy Dossett & Liam Metcalf-White

This special issue of Implicit Religion engages critically and theoretically with the language of religion and spirituality as articulated within different presentations of addiction, and across a range of communities of addiction recovery.

Spirituality is commonly identified as a factor within a holistic approach to healthcare. The term functions as a placeholder for individualised orientation around existential questions and ultimate values. It is routinely reified as one dimension of human experience, amongst others, with a bearing on health and wellbeing outcomes. Rarely, outside some specific religious contexts such as Christian Science, is spirituality explicitly presented as a totalising frame for understanding disease, or as comprising a treatment or cure. The fields of addiction and addiction recovery offer a distinctive counter-instance; in which the language of spirituality is often (though significantly, not always) positioned as both normative and fundamental.

This special issue explores how this language intersects with the notion of disease, and with ideas of agency, responsibility and free-will. It considers the place of narrative, community, social identity, and creativity in conceptions of recovery spirituality.   Articles may offer case studies in any recovery modality:

  • Mutual Aid (12 Step/SMART/other);
  • Faith-based;
  • Acceptance and Commitment Therapy;
  • Mindfulness;
  • Cognitive Behavioural Therapy;
  • Motivational Interviewing;
  • Medication-Assisted Recovery;
  • Warrior Down;
  • Asset-Based Community Development;
  • Peer-Mentoring; etc.

or engage with wider, culturally mediated and politicised notions of recovery, such as those found explicitly in the recovery advocacy movement, and implicitly within popular culture. Contributions may use lenses of gender, sexuality, class, culture, and stigma, among other critical and interdisciplinary approaches and perspectives, to illuminate liberative or oppressive aspects of recovery spirituality discourse.

Proposals are sought from for 6-8K word articles, shorter review/opinion pieces, as well as offers to respond to pieces submitted by others. Academics and researchers might consider collaborating with professional colleagues, recovery advocates, or people in recovery.

Please send a 300-500 word abstract/proposal to l.metcalfwhite@chester.ac.uk by 16th April 2018.  Submission deadline is November 1st 2018.