It isn't fun without your friends...

When the word culture is mentioned, a rush of ideas and concepts run through our minds. Culture constructs who we are...the way we dress, talk, think, act, etc... We defined culture as a group of people and who they are, what they make, how they understand and create their reality. It is unique and the building blocks of society. Individuals within that society develop the culture and soak in it. Culture is nothing without its signs, objects or subjects. Signs are the indicators of a culture and the aspects that we read into when we analyze a culture. Objects are things that are part of a culture and are produced by the culture as well as help to produce/maintain that culture. Examples can be football games, hot dogs and drive thrus...Subjects are people (individuals mentioned earlier) in a culture and are produced by the culture as well as help to produce/maintain a culture.

The way a society views an object or idea is no doubt different from another society and that is due to culture....in general, what one culture/society carries out is different from another. For example, in our culture, we shake each other's hands upon greeting one another in a professional setting or as a friendly gesture whereas in Korea, bowing to one another is the equivalent of our hand shaking.

Howard Becker's "Becoming a Marijuana User" is an excellent example of the effect of culture and how significant it is to have a group of peers when one is using this substance. The key idea is how weighty the marijuana culture is and how it builds the user. Social construction is how a person within a culture is built up by others around him and it ties in effectively with this reading due to the effects that a user experiences from the concepts he/she learns from peers. In the pot-smoking culture, the user will not find the use of marijuana pleasurable if he/she does not have the necessary tools to create/believe in the effects. The user needs a group of peers to show him how to do it and what it will feel like...in Becker's words, "No one becomes a user without learning to smoke the drug in a way which will produce real effects; learning to recognize the effects and connect them with drug use; and learning to enjoy the sensations he perceives." A non-user or someone who does not enjoy it will not understand the culture or its objects. Just picture in your mind the deer caught in headlights look on a marijuana user's face upon hearing the word "pot" or marijuana and their thirst for it.