On Sun, 23 Mar 2003, Carrol Cox wrote:
> Has anyone ever critiqued the very idea of a "counterculture"? It seems
> to me to be mostly a bright idea of some Time magazine journalist, not a
> concept that leads (or ever has led) to saying anything very useful
> about the world.
>
> Carrol
>
Yes, even the exemplars--hippies, street gangs, religious cults-- enthusiastically conform to and perpetuate dominant values and norms in their society; they are not simply and completely rejecting the "dominant" culture. Hippies reinforce the American values of liberty and individualism ("do your own thing"); street gangs reinforce values of material success and "taking care of your own"; and so on. I think it's much more useful to identify how people's personal beliefs--even the so called rebels' beliefs! --reflect the social and historical context in which they live.
Miles