Becoming a Marihuana User by Howard Becker

I've read this article for my contemporary theory class and came up with two ideas that might be helpful for my project.

1) In order to learn something you need to put yourself in that environment. you need to interact with the unknown.
(as he went to observe and interview marihuana users to understand what make them to smoke. as the novice who interacted with more experienced users in order to learn how to smoke it for pleasure)

the importance of interaction with others
-let you learn more(something you had no interest before)
-see other possibilities in different aspects
-correct your wrong hypothesis
-through the interpretation and modification, you develop your own opinion.

2)“no one becomes a user without (1) learns to smoke it in a way that will produce real effects; (2) learns to recognize the effects and connect them with drug use; and (3) learns to enjoy the sensations he perceives. In the course of this process he debelops a disposition or motivation to use marihuana which was not and could not have been present when he began use, for it involves and depends on conceptions of the drug which could only grow out of the kind of actual experience detailed above”(58).

-learn the technique
-learn to percieve the effect
-learn to enjoy the effect

“deviant motives actually develop in the course of experience with the deviant activity”(42).

motivation does not occur randomly or suddenly at the first stage. It can be only developed by conceptions of such things which could only grow out of the actual/physical experience.

Through my design, the audience can 1)learn how to experience other culture, 2) learn to recognize the effect and connect it with the experience, 3) learn to enjoy the effect

Through this experience, I hope my audience will gain their own conception of other culture, and it will motivate them to know more about other cultures and to increase the interaction.


I don't know what I am saying either. but this reading helped me which direction my ideas should go.

Goal is to increase+develop motivation to interact with other culture



in order to do that, create cultural activities or experience that the audience can enjoy and appreciate. Help them developing their conception of other culture as positive, beneficial, fun,etc. so that the audience gains motivation to know more about the culture and be connected with it.