Lecture 3 How to Get High or Symbolic Interactionism 02 28 2014 Howard Becker s Becoming a Marijuana User 1953 Example of Symbolic Interactionism Crucial and social interactions in becoming a marijuana user Meaning is constructed socially through interactions You have to learn through social interactions what getting high is Learning meanings or changing meanings through social interaction From not being pleasurable to being pleasurable conceptualization o Learn the technique o Recognize the symptoms o Enjoy the symptoms E g Animal House professor smokes marijuana with his students Can also be applied to being a college student sex o E g Annie Hall the wrong kind of orgasm Erving Goffman Presentation of Self in Everyday Life 1922 1982 Famous for Dramaturgical Theory o Variant of symbolic interactionism o Concerned primarily with the construction and maintenance of the self o The self as performed Overarching assumption is that all actions are all performances to maintain certain desired impressions of the self There is no outside There is nothing but these roles there is no real self you just play roles after role E g even authenticity is a role such as the role of being a Hipster Portlandia the 1890s are alive in Portland A status a position a social place is not a material thing but a pattern of appropriate conduct Something that must be enacted and portrayed We do not have an exact script but we all act better than we know All the world is not of course a stage but the crucial ways in which it isn t are not easy to specify Dramaturgical Theory Performance all the activity of a given participant on a given occasion which serves to influence in any way any of the other participants Part pre established pattern of action which I unfolded during a Defensive and protective practices tact Front standardized equipment used in performances i e used to define performance situations o The setting Lecture 3 How to Get High or Symbolic Interactionism 02 28 2014 o The personal front speech patterns clothing hairstyle race E g Obama as a college student mixing the setting of college and the personal front of a president Moreover people who don t play recognizable parts are either foreign or crazy o Front stage vs back stage different roles in different situations Front stage is formal and back is informal Symbolic Interactionism Micro sociology vs macro sociology o For example Becker on Marijuana Basic tenets o People act towards things based on the meanings of those things o The meaning of the things are the products of human interaction o Meanings are modified through an interpretive process