Vie Libre and the Maladie Alcoolique: Conceptions of Drinking and Abstinence in a Mutual-Aid Movement in Paris
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Join the FSU College of Social Work, Department of Anthropology, and Stoops Center for Communities, Families, and Children for a presentation by Dr. Matthew Pettit, from the University of Toronto, titled, "Vie Libre and the Maladie Alcoolique: Conceptions of Drinking and Abstinence in a Mutual-Aid Movement in Paris" on Thursday, February 1st, at 4 pm in Miller Hall (3rd Floor), 296 Champions Way, University Center C.
Vie Libre is a French mutual-aid movement that supports those who feel they have lost control over their drinking. In this talk, Dr. Matthew Pettit describes their “maladie alcoolique,” a local conception of problematic drinking that is distinct from the “disease model” popularized by Alcoholics Anonymous and the Alcohol Use Disorder found in the DSM.
Dr. Pettit explores the non-specificity and heterogeneity of the maladie and how it can accommodate the group members’ shifting conceptions of themselves and their alcohol use. Both drinking and sobriety – and their motivation, evaluation, and explanation – are embedded in multiple, often conflicting, frameworks. This talk will consider the conceptual affordances provided by the maladie to those caught between them.
Dr. Matthew Pettit is a Montreal-based medical anthropologist whose research focuses on the intersections of addiction, self-knowledge, expertise, and mutual aid. He works as an applied anthropologist with Faculty of Change, a strategy consultancy founded on ethnographic methods.