Marijuana is a very well-known and commonly used drug. Yet, there are many different attitudes and meanings attached to it. So why is there such a variation in people’s attitudes towards marijuana. This can be explained and understood by using the symbolic interactionism theory. Marijuana is a very controversial topic among Americans and much research has been done regarding it. The Pew Research Center has gathered information on the opinions Americans have towards the legalization of marijuana. The data shows what percentage of Americans think it should be legal or not. There is also data on reasons why they have their opinions and meanings toward marijuana. This data helps to further understand and apply this theory to the use of marijuana.
Symbolic interactionism perspective is a theory that is used to study social life. To do this, this theory relies on studying and observing the interactions among people and how they form meanings to things from those interactions. Although, there is much more to this theory than that. Blumer, the man who invented the term symbolic interactionism, presented three premises which help to understand this theory. The first one is, people act a certain way towards things depending on their meaning for that thing. The second premise is that we get meanings from social interaction, so we are taught meanings or we witness them from others. Lastly, the third premise is that meanings are able to change because people have the mental capacity to
According to Bernie Sanders, “It is time to tax and regulate marijuana like alcohol. It is time to end the arrest of so many people and the destruction of so many lives for possessing marijuana”. Cannabis is considered to be an illegal drug but is used for medical purpose. 587,700 people were arrested for marijuana in 2016. More people always get arrested for marijuana than other crimes like rape, murder, or robbery.
Symbolic interaction theory emerged in the early 1900s and is still one of the more frequently used theories in the family studies (Smith & Hamon, 2012). The theory assumes that people have different interpretations of situations due to their personal experiences (Smith & Hamon, 2012). By looking at the behaviors of individuals, symbolic interaction theory explains how multiple people have different reactions to the same situation (Smith & Hamon, 2012).
Symbolic interactionism is a theoretical perspective that people use definitions, meanings, symbols, interpretations, and human interactions to compare themselves to others (Henslin, 2010, p. 15). Herbert Blumer, whom attended University of Chicago with one of the founders of the
Symbolic interactionism focuses on the language and symbols that help us give meaning to the experiences in life. It also studies how people discuss the meaning of social life during interactions
The Symbolic Interaction theory refers to ways in which a family or society attaches meaning to verbal communication, non-verbal communication, people, and objects. We are taught from a young age communication using verbal language and accepted ways to express our needs. The theory represents perception of objects or actions (Macionis, 2007, p.17).
"Marijuana is the second most popular drug after alcohol in the country today. So many people smoke marijuana that the numbers alone seem to legitimize and condone its presence in people's lives. Yet, even in moderation marijuana is not 'safe.' Somehow this information had not filtered down to people who think they are smoking a fairly innocuous drug. Our society perpetuates the myths about pot being a fun, harmless, recreational drug. These myths feed into people's denial of marijuana's problems" (Baum 6). However, the abuse of marijuana is a problem. It is not only a personal problem, but also more importantly a social problem. Throughout history marijuana has been used to serve various purposes in many
Herbert Blumer, the first person to use the term symbolic interactionism, once suggested three basic premises for it. He put the first one as “humans act toward a thing on the basis of the meaning they assign to the thing” , which is to say that human’s perceptions and behaviors are not directly determined by objects or phenomena in the physical
Symbolic Interactionism looks at how every individual will give everything in their society a different meaning depending on their past experiences and expectations. It is a behavior dictated by the meanings we connect to signs, symbols, and interactions. The main thought was that your sense of self develops through social interactions that you have with other people. And those interactions are based on the symbols that you view during that time. Symbolic Interactionism examines deviance by not trusting official statistics and see them as socially constructed, ignores big structures such as class and poverty, and does not concerned with why people commit crime, more concerned with how certain groups become labeled as criminals.
Living in the 21st Century, a majority of the laws and regulations that guide our daily lives have already been legitimized and written decades ago. Although a large portion of these laws still exist today, there is always need to revise and rewrite laws. In this article I will talk about the myths and beliefs of marijuana and compare them to reliable sources to form an opinion on whether or not marijuana is a relatively safe drug for medical and recreational use along with the physical and social effects to the user and their environment. Regard, this paper will not focus on any other associated topics such as the price of prisons, annual marijuana dispensary revenue, drug trafficking or law policy’s. However many of the used articles compare and contrast the use of alcohol to cannabis.
Symbolic-Interaction Perspective is about how people naturally assign meanings to things. Occasionally these meanings have some ground to stand on but that is not always the case. These subjective meanings shape the way we view the world. Symbolic-Interaction Perspective can be taken advantage of in order to influence consumers by using tools like the media.
There have been many aspects of the human being that have been examined and many theories proposed to explain how we develop and why one person can be satisfied with a certain task and the other not. Symbolic interaction is one theory that strives to provide an explanation to our development. Simply put, this theory states that there is a link between the individual and social interactions. Through our interactions we develop a sense of self and knowledge about others and the world around us. Interactions give our lives meaning and this meaning guides our behavior
Herbert Blumer discussed symbolic interactionism in three tentative ways: we act based upon the meaning we give to an idea or thing, we give meaning to things based on our social interactions, and that the meanings we give are not permanent. Consider two individuals who generally live the same ideal lifestyle. Consider they both wake up each day, go
According to Wikipedia, marijuana is a name for cannabis plant and a drug preparation made from it. Commonly it is named as cannabis, bud or weed, pot or ganja. I have found marijuana to be one of the most controversial things in United States. Not necessarily is marijuana controversial, the views related with the legalization of this thing are truly dubious. It is true that different persons have different views to see every object. So the view of peoples towards the legalization of marijuana varies with the person. In the United States, I have found that some of the people think that marijuana should be legalized because it is not much harmful as people’s belief and also there are lots of therapeutic values. Others believe that it is a drug and gateway to other drugs so it should not be legalized. And some believe that as it has both good and bad effects it should be legalized with certain condition. In this essay I am going to talk about the views of different people on the legalization of marijuana.
Over less than a decade in America, the public opinion on the consumption of marijuana has affectedly shifted toward support for it’s the legalization. In has been observed that for reasonable period in the past, attitude on this issue remained quite stable, however, the turn of the millennium disturbed this long-standing compromise. As such, emotions in favor of marijuana legalization have risen by nearly twenty points fairly over a decade (Bjornlund 23). Thus, the same statistics indicates that
Symbolic interactionism as a term was coined by Herbert Blumer to further develop the theories of George Herbert Mead and Charles Horton Cooley. This perspective gives priority to the importance of understanding the meanings of social action. This framework works with the belief that human social behaviour is based on symbolic meanings that are found within a given situation (Tepperman et al., 2013 p.369). Symbolic interactionism, being a form of microsociology, focuses attention on the smallest systems of society, being individual people and their interaction. Symbolic interactionists, like all microsociologists, see society