THE SIXTIES: COUNTERCULTURE AND PROTEST

The Sixties: Counterculture and Protest

The Sixties: Counterculture and Protest

Section (A)

Matusow, “Rise and Fall of the Counterculture

In this article, Matusow delineates the concept of counterculture and how it emerged in the history of United States. A counterculture represents a cultural group whose lifestyle is opposed to the prevailing culture. Countercultures construct an alternative culture that contests mainstream societal beliefs and values while desiring to influence social change. Countercultures share the characteristics of the following principles and values: they assign primacy to individuality at the expense of social conventions and governmental constraints, they challenge authoritarianism, and they embrace individual and social change.

The counterculture movements all influenced the development of the environmental movement by including the environment as part of their social concerns, equating “nature” with wild and authentic and in opposition to the conformity of suburbia, the corporate world, artificiality, and the logic of technocracy. He also expounds the movement such as Hippie. The Hippie culture was originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the sixties and it spread all over the world.

Coontz, “First Comes Love”

In this article, Coontz reflects the thoughts and statistics regarding sex, gender, marriage and various other factors. He expound that there is a shift towards sex before marriage. According to the author, the liberation factors incline people towards a self-indulgence scenario. It allows them to have a liberal discretion to do what they want.

The tradition about family and bearing child was very significant in past but now its value has been decreasing drastically. Teen age marriages contribute to only 2%. White woman only posses 43% of their life time in marriage, on the contrary, this figure is 22% in the case of black woman. He also expresses that immense shift in the practices of youth as the rate of leaving home, working and living alone, getting married, finding jobs and, various other chunks of lives is on rise.

Schechter, “Myth of the Eternal Child”

Schechter begins his article by expounding the archetypal theory. Jung postulated his theory on the archetype that structures the psyche of man. He explains: "Here I must clarify the relationship between the archetypes and instincts. What we call "instinct" is a physiological drive, perceived by the senses but these instincts are also manifested by fantasies and often reveal their presence only by symbolic images. It is these events that I call archetypes. Their origin is unknown. They reappear at anytime and anywhere in the world, even where it is not possible to explain their presence by transmission from generation to generation, or by cross-fertilization resulting from migration.

He then tells that the flowering child concept got immense popularity during the period between the end of World War II and the Vietnam War. He explicates that the counterculture was given its shape and direction which is well reflected from the theory of Jung.

Ehrenreich, “Rock Rebellion”

This article explains the thoughts, acts, causes, and activities of rock culture that was developed in 60s. After the end of 1940s, U.S. began a culture of rock, which raised the use of drugs, and stimulated the youth to make restless ...