|
|
|
|
|
Becoming a marijuana user
|
|
|
Howard S. Becker conducted a study that consisted of interviewing fifty marijuana users. This study was concerned with the presence or absence of marijuana use in an individual’s behavior. His study looks for characteristics of attitude changes and experiences that lead the use of marijuana for pleasure. He battles the predispositional theories throughout the article using the symbolic interactionist perspective to detail his views and findings from his research. He finds that for an individual to become a recreational user then he or she must learn a process that allows for the use of marijuana for pleasure. His term “use for pleasure” is used to mean a non-obsessive type of use (1953). Question #1 Becker explains in his study that the existence of any certain type of behavior is the product of a string of events or that cause the person to obtain a preconceived meaning of the behavior. His explanation of this is the exact definition of the symbolic interactionist perspective. The three main principles of this perspective are humans act towards things by way of the meanings that they attach to them, these meanings arise from social interaction, and these meanings can change due to social interaction (1999).
|
|
|
|
Still Can't Find What Your Looking For? Then Try a Essay Search!
|
