Fieldworkers often view their own personal involvement and attitudes as contamination that must be eliminated from research. This paper instead treats that “image of deviation” as a valuable interpretive resource, opening a new field of inquiry. Drawing on the narrative mode, the authors develop a descriptive method that transforms the fieldworker's image into a tool for interpretation, focusing on writing and reading modes to avoid self-reflection dead ends. They distinguish between content (what is described) and method (how to describe), and analyze first- and third-person narratives to show interaction-based meaning construction. Applying this approach to fieldwork on people who have taken magic mushrooms, the paper reinterprets the practice as an interpretive technique, offering limited hints about why people take them.
Magic mushroom users categorize their substance as a non-“drug” by drawing on the public discourse of endangerment and atrocity tales, but reinterpreting those resources locally. Through interaction with people who label ingestion a criminal act or drug use, users employ categories such as “legal” and “natural” to define magic mushrooms as distinct from other drugs. In everyday talk, users prioritize personal experience over public discourse, using atrocity tales as interpretive resources. The natural-versus-chemical distinction risks being disproved, but users set aside such challenges through resolve and self-preservation work, attributing negative cases to improper use. The paper argues for category-analyzed ethnography to study how public discourse combines with members' folklore into local cultures.