Construction of The Emotional Policy in "Anonymous" Mutual Aid Communities on the Example of NA (Narcotics Anonymous) Groups in Russia

Anonymous communities are communities whose goal is the social rehabilitation of addicts, which is carried out through weekly meetings and individual work in steps. Addicts are socially stigmatized in the prevailing culture and therefore community gatherings become an "emotional refuge" for the addict, which supports them in difficult situations, thereby forming a transitional subculture between the prevailing culture and the stigmatized culture of substance users. Another important property of stigmatization of addicts leads to self-stigmatization of the dependent, which causes "escapism". The purpose of the NA community is to stop the self-stigmatization of the individual by recognizing "addiction as an incurable disease", thereby forcing the individual to reconsider their experience. These communities are well studied in the world research tradition, but all research focuses on different aspects of the existence of communities, which is why there is still no theory in sociology that comprehensively describes communities. An interesting attempt to create such an approach was made by Yulia Prozorova, who conceptualized the 12-step method through the prism of R. Collins ' interactive rituals, which takes the exchange of emotions as the main factor of rehabilitation effectiveness as the main focus of consideration. I am continuing this approach and drawing on the theory of" emotional politics " by Sarah Ahmed, through which I aim to describe the mechanisms that shape emotional politics in NA communities, as well as highlight the types of individual and group emotional work that are reproduced in NA communities. My research is based on the results of included observations in NA groups in Moscow, at speakers ' and working meetings. The results of my research were the identification of the main types of emotional work in the community, as well as the types of their lexical representation.