This chapter provides an overview of the monograph, grounded in extended
ethnography; describes the rationale for its format; outlines basic characteristics of
primary and secondary field sites; explains the purpose served by selecting life story
excerpts from 24 randomized narrators; summarizes the story behind the monograph’s
title; presents snippets of “people in the data” through extreme cases and events that
extend beyond structural vulnerability into experiences much like our own, yet more
severe in social adversity. Two monograph data sources are described, the Migrant
Worker Risk Study and the Drug Use Onset Study. In the latter project, Narrative Life
Stories were taped and transcribed. Men and women currently or once active in farm
labor comprise the sample of 127 narrators, who at the time of their interview were
using or had previously used drugs and/or alcohol.
Keywords: Being there, breadbasket, casual site, Drug Use Onset Study,
emergent discovery, emergent sampling, extended ethnography, farm labor, field,
house of habitus, industrial farming, life stories, Migrant Worker Risk Study,
mobile colonialism, primary site, randomized narrators, secondary site, social
exclusion, structural vulnerability, text, voiceless/invisible.
