ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses one of Alan DeSantis's articles about his ethnography of cigar smoking, his 2003 article published in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography titled 'A Couple of White Guys Sitting Around Talking: The Collective Rationalization of Cigar Smokers'. It illustrates the importance of thoughtfully choosing a field site, thoroughly coding and analyzing data, using theory to address real-world problems, and looking for the unexpected. Alan D. DeSantis is an ethnographer and rhetorical scholar whose research focuses on cultural and historical discourse. DeSantis investigated how and why college students at American public universities use prescription ADHD medication for non-medical uses, the process in which students obtain these illegal stimulants, and the rationalizations and justification used by illegal users to reframe the stigma of illegal drug use. As the chapter examines that the qualitative communication researchers have to acknowledge their presence affects what they are studying.
