FROM JUNK" TO JESUS : ADDICT CONVERSIONS AS IDENTITY MANAGEMENT"

Abstract

This academic exercise sets out to investigate the sociology of Christian conversion among drug addicts in Singapore. Religion serves as an instrument of change for many drug addicts and ex-addicts; it aids in the repudiation of their "addict" selves, and in the creation and maintenance of their new "Christian" selves. Addict conversions typically comprise multiple and cumulative events that constitute part of the process of identity management. The methods used in the collection of data on the subjects' conversion biography and their characteristic ways of talking and thinking about themselves were: participant-observation and in-depth focused interviews. The rhetorical properties of an addict-convert are displayed in Chapter Two, where it is argued that for a new religious identity to be established, new announcements have to be recurrently made and validated through the addict-convert's talk and reasoning. In Chapter Three, the transience of prison/DRC conversions is explained, through a description of the difficulties faced by inmates in maintaining their fragile Christian selves. For a sanctification of their identities to occur, plausibility structures need to be put in place. Chapter Four examines how religious identities are established and maintained in a situated context, such as a Christian halfway house. Halfway house conversions are therefore interactive, exchange processes that involve socially structured events arising from the performance of the "convert" role. Chapter Five illustrates how addict-converts stay committed to Christianity through a network of role-relationships that their religious identity implies. Thus, the more consequential their identity is for them, the greater their commitment will be to it.