Meaning of Counterculture (What it is, Concept and Definition)

What is Counterculture:

The term counterculture refers to those cultural movements that oppose the dominant or hegemonic culture. As a rule, these movements directly or indirectly confront the established social order, which generates in their nonconformity, discomfort, frustration, indignation, or resistance.

Counterculture groups oppose dominant social values ​​through symbols or public actions. In this sense, they challenge the established norms within society through many resources.

Such resources can cover elements such as dress code, verbal language, body language, lifestyle, artistic expressions, and political activities, among many others.

The trends will depend on the type of motivation that animates the groups since these differ in their objectives. However, they have in common the rejection of cultural hegemony and the feeling of marginalization in the system.

Two senses can be recognized in the use of the term counterculture: a historical sense, where all recognizable countercultural groups throughout history have a place, and a sociological sense, which refers to the groups that manifest themselves from the 60s to the today with very particular characteristics.

 

Origin of the counterculture

The expression counterculture was coined by the historian Theodore Roszak, who in 1968 published a book called The Birth of a Counterculture. In the book, Roszak reflects on the technocratic society and the mechanisms that youth sectors activated to confront it.

Although it is clear that countercultural phenomena are older than this term, it makes sense that it was born in the context of the changes that occurred in the mid-20th century.

In the mid-20th century, society became a mass and consumer society, leaving behind the still recent traditional order. The mass media and the cultural industry that reached their peak then had a leading role in the reconfiguration of society and the ways of appropriating information.

The atmosphere of confrontation promoted by the Cold War and the Vietnam War also took its toll, generating great anxiety in the social environment.

If anything that challenges the dominant culture is considered to be countercultural, the civil rights movement in the US, the free speech movement, feminism, environmentalism, and gay liberation can be included in the list. that appeared or became stronger in the 1960s.

They are also joined by groups that rebelled against the dominant order and proposed other lifestyles, such as hippies, psychedelia, and urban tribes. Popular music, in fact, was also a countercultural phenomenon in the 1960s.

Since then, other countercultural groups have emerged alongside new realities. The 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s also spawned such groups. We can mention punk, grunge, and many more.

 

Controversy on the counterculture

Although countercultural movements appear as a reaction and alternative to the hegemonic society, some of them have not really managed to capitalize on a social transformation.

For certain researchers, such as the Venezuelan writer Luis Britto García, countercultures are captured by the dominant order and transformed into consumer subcultures, which makes their power invisible or nullifies and makes them part of what they oppose.

The commodification of countercultural symbols would be proof of this, since these symbols, available in a commercial window, do not express more than individual tastes and orientations, but do not shake the foundations of society.

 

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