ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the critical turn in rhetoric and traditional concepts in rhetorical theory that operate within rhetorical ethnography. It presents the political and health advocacy organization, DanceSafe, to illustrate the potential of the method. DanceSafe's advocacy provides a challenging site for exploring the potential of rhetorical ethnography within the politics of health in the War on Drugs. Critical-rhetorical ethnographers engage in a vernacular organization's ideals and events, traveling with them to picket, to protest, to petition, or to perform. Phronesis in critical-rhetorical ethnography operates as a guiding principle for the researcher and combines an analysis of argumentation strategy with self-reflexivity. Critical-rhetorical ethnographers would advocate for change by supporting the vernacular organization and its conception of a (new) political reality. The method of critical-rhetorical ethnography continues the lineage of scholarship that attends to the process and production of locally situated discourse by adding a participatory sensibility to abstinence-based approaches.
