Who are anti-culture people?
- Do not confuse anti-culture with anti-social and anti-cultural behavior
- Definition of counterculture
- Literature in counterculture
- The role of media in counterculture
- Music in counterculture
- Digital counterculture
- What does disposing of the body mean?
- Originality and experimentation in counterculture
- Placelessness or homelessness in the counterculture
- Examples of countercultures
- Homosexuality and counterculture
- Bill Ozgerbi’s essay on counterculture
What cultures and who are called subcultures?
A counterculture is a culture whose values and behavioral norms are fundamentally different from the values of the society’s mainstream culture, which is sometimes entirely against the mainstream cultural customs. A counterculture movement expresses the ethos and aspirations of a specific population within a well-defined period.
When oppositional forces reach critical mass, countercultures can create dramatic cultural changes. Prominent examples of countercultures in the Western world include the Levelers (1650–1645), Bohemianism (1910–1850), the more diffuse counterculture of the Beat Generation (1964–1944), followed by the globalized counterculture of the 1960s (1964– 1974). Also, cultures are different.
A group of people within a culture who consider themselves different from the mother culture they belong to and often violate some of the fundamental principles of their family culture or society are called subcultures. Subcultures change their norms and values regarding cultural, political, and sexual issues and consider themselves a part of society by maintaining their characteristics.
Definition of counterculture
John Milton Younger coined the term “counterculture” in his 1960 article in the American Sociological Review. Younger suggested the use of the term counterculture: “Wherever the normative system of a group, as an element primary, have a subject in conflict with the values of the society as a whole, where personality variables are directly involved in the development and maintenance of the group’s values, and where its norms can be understood only by reference to the group’s relationship with the surrounding dominant culture, to those individuals It is called anti-culture.”
Some scholars have attributed the counterculture to Theodore Roszak, author of the book “Making Counterculture.” It became prominent in the news media amid the social revolution that swept the Americas, Western Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand during the 1960s.
Scientists differ in the features and characteristics they attribute to “counterculture.” Of course, the “mainstream” culture is also difficult to define, and in some ways, it is identified and understood through contrast with the counterculture. Counterculture may oppose mass culture, “media culture, ” or middle-class culture and values. Counterculture is sometimes conceptualized regarding generational conflict and rejection of older or adult values.
Counterculture may or may not be overtly political. It usually involves criticizing or rejecting current powerful institutions and hoping for a better life or a new society. He does not have a favorable view of party politics or authoritarianism.
Cultural development can also be affected through counterculture. Scholars such as Joan Martin and Karen Sohail consider counterculture and cultural development to be “a balancing act; some of the core values of a counterculture must be a direct challenge to the core values of the dominant culture.” Therefore, a mainstream culture and a counterculture must exist in an uneasy symbiosis, taking opposing positions on valuable issues that are fundamentally important to each other.
“According to this theory, a counterculture can perform many useful functions for the mainstream culture, such as ‘clarifying the bases between appropriate and inappropriate behavior and providing a haven for the development of innovative ideas.'” In the late 1960s, the hippies became the largest and most They became the most watched counterculture group in the United States.
According to Sheila Whiteley, “recent developments in sociological theory complicate and problematize theories developed in the 1960s; for example, digital technology provides the impetus for new understandings of the counterculture.” Andy Bennett writes that “despite the theoretical arguments that can be made against the sociological value of counterculture as a meaningful term for classifying social action, such as subcultures, the term as a concept in social and cultural theory It remains, however, that this includes not only urban but also dystopian ideals.
Death of iconic figures such as Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Janis Joplin. The nihilistic invasion of Altamont and the hidden character of Charles Manson cast a darker light on its original agenda, reminding us that pathological issues are still critical in today’s world.
Literature in counterculture
The 1960s and early 1970s counterculture produced its unique brand of prominent literature, including comics and cartoons, and is sometimes called the underground press. In the United States, it also includes work by Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, and Mr. Natural, who created (Keep Truckin’. Fritz the Cat; Fat Freddy’s Cat; Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers; album cover for Cheap Thrills. He has contributed to the International Times, The Village Voice, and Oz magazine in several countries.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, these comics and magazines were available in stores, along with items such as beads, incense, cigarette papers, neckties, Day-Glo posters, books, and more.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, some of these shops that sold hippie items became cafes where hippies could sit, chat, smoke marijuana, read books, etc… Gandalf’s Garden on King’s Road, London He also published a magazine with the same name. Another hippie/anarchist bookstore was Mushroom Books in Nottingham’s Torry Market.
The role of media in counterculture
Some genres challenge societies with their content, which aims to question norms within cultures and even bring about change, usually towards a more modern way of thinking. Most of the sources of these controversies can be found in art, such as Marcel Duchamp’s 1917. Militant artists like Banksy, whose base for most of their work, departs from mainstream media and culture to develop pieces that usually shock viewers into thinking about their piece in more detail and its themes. An excellent example can be found in Dismaland, where the most significant “anarchism” project was organized and exhibited, and numerous works, such as the iconic Disney Princess Pumpkin Carriage, appear to recreate the death of Princess Diana.
Music in counterculture
Counterculture is evident in music, primarily based on separating genres into acceptable, existing, and unacceptable conditions. Since many minority groups are already considered countercultural, the music they create and produce may reflect their sociopolitical realities, and their musical culture may be accepted as a social expression of their counterculture. This theme is reflected in dances with the concept of base frequencies and base culture in Henriques’ “Sound Diaspora.”
Henriques says, “Base culture is a bottom-up, grassroots street culture created by the urban underclass who survive almost entirely outside the formal economy. The fact that the music has a low frequency in terms of sound and is considered a reflection of the common culture shows the compelling connection between the counterculture and the music produced. Although the music may be regarded as base culture and counterculture, it may have gained in popularity by labeling hip-hop as a counterculture genre despite being one of the most commercially successful genres. And it is a bestseller.
Although once taboo, many of these artists have been assimilated into the culture and are no longer a source of moral panic because they do not cross overtly controversial issues or challenge the mainstream of current culture. Rather than being an object to be feared, they have started subtle trends that other artists and media sources may follow.
Digital counterculture
Definition and theory
Digital countercultures are online communities and patterns of technology use that deviate significantly from mainstream culture. To understand the elements that shape digital countercultures, it is best to start with Lingle’s classifications of mainstream approaches to digital discourse: that online activity is concerned with embodying the immaterial, that the Internet is a platform for authenticity and experimentation, and that web-based interaction They are out of place.
What does disposing of the body mean?
The premise of online visualization is that, unlike the physical nature of offline interactions, the user’s physical presence has nothing to do with their online interactions. However, for users whose physical existence is marginalized or shaped by the counterculture, e.g.: (non-binary gender identities, ethnic minorities, punk culture/fashion), their lived experiences create a subjectivity that informs interactions. They are transferred online. As Shaka McGlutton puts it, the fluidity and playfulness of cyberspace and the intimacy it was supposed to afford are marked by corporeality.
Originality and experimentation in counterculture
The argument that the Internet is a platform for originality and experimentation highlights its role in creating or reinforcing identities. This approach claims that the norms of non-virtual social life limit users’ ability to express themselves fully in person.
However, online interactions remove these barriers and allow them to identify in new ways. One of the things this discovery does is online “identity tourism,” which will enable users to take ownership of their identity without any offline physical risks associated with that identity. A criticism of this form of testing is that it gives Internet tourists the false impression that they understand the experiences and history of that identity, even if their Internet interactions are superficial.
Furthermore, it is harmful when used as a means of deceptive self-presentation to attract the attention of digital counterculture communities. However, especially for countercultures that are marginalized or demonized, experimentation can allow users to adopt an identity that they align with but hide from and engage with that culture out of fear.
Placelessness or homelessness in the counterculture
The final approach focuses on online communication as placeless and claims that the Internet nullifies the consequences of geographic distance. Lingle argues that this approach is technologically deterministic because it assumes that placelessness creates access to technology that can correct structural inequality alone. Furthermore, Mark Graham states that the persistence of spatial metaphors in describing the social impact of the Internet is a binary offline/online worldview that can depoliticize and obscure the genuine and unequal power relations between different groups of people.
This perceived depoliticization hinders the understanding of digital countercultures. Sociocultural hierarchies and power on the Internet shape the mainstream, and without these mainstreams as a point of comparison, there is no basis for defining digital counterculture.
Examples of countercultures
Marginalized communities often struggle to meet their needs in mainstream media. Annenberg School for Communication Associate Professor Jessa Lingle conducted field research on examples of digital counterculture as part of her studies. In Digital Countercultures and the Struggle for Community, he focused on the Brooklyn Drag community and their battle for Facebook to meet their specific needs in using social media. In drag culture, there are many holidays and festivals, such as Halloween, New Year’s Eve, and Bushwag, that they celebrate with extravagant nightlife. While using social media platforms like Facebook to post and record their cultural happenings, the drag community has noticed a considerable gap between the weirder, more counter-cultural community of drag queens and Facebook’s purported global community.
The gap was further exposed through Facebook’s policy change from “real name” to “valid name” in 2015 when hundreds of drag queen accounts were blocked and closed for failing to register with their legal names. Communities with queer culture and marginalized needs continue to struggle to meet their social media needs while maintaining their countercultural identities in today’s social media landscape, where several extensive technology companies largely monopolize the Internet. , they balance.
Homosexuality and counterculture
Gay liberation (considered the forerunner of various LGBT social movements) due to its links with the counterculture of the time (e.g., groups such as peri-radicals) and because of the desire of gay liberationists to change or abolish essential institutions of Society, like gender and family in general, had a radical, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist politics.
At the beginning of the 20th century, homosexual acts were punishable crimes in these countries. The prevailing public attitude was that homosexuality was a moral defect that should be punished, as exemplified by the trial and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde in 1895 for gross indecency. But even then, there were dissenting opinions.
Bill Osgerby argues that Different fields of counterculture were formed from previous artistic and political movements. On both sides of the Atlantic, the 1950s combined existentialist philosophy with jazz, poetry, literature, Eastern mysticism, and drugs—themes that all featured in the counterculture of the 1960s.
Bill Osgerby is an Emeritus Media, Culture, and Communication Professor at London Metropolitan University. He has published widely on British and American cultural history in the 20th century.
