Encyclopedia of Sociology

COUNTERCULTURES

combined the mystical and utopian features of
countercultures in their withdrawal from conven-
tional society and their search for a higher tran-
scendence. Revolutionary youth gangs, such as the
1960s radicals, the Hell’s Angels, and the punkers,
fuse the mystical search for new experiences and
insights (often through drug use) with an activist
attack on the dominant culture and its institution-
al expressions. Survivalists, Amish, and Hare Krish-
nas fuse the radical critique of conventional values
and lifestyles with a withdrawal into an isolated
and protected community.

Countercultures can be differentiated by their
primary breaks with the dominant culture. Some
take odds with its epistemology, or the way society
contends that it knows the truth. Hippies and
other mystics, for example, have tended to seek
insight in homespun wisdom, meditation, sensory
deprivation, or drugs, rejecting the rationality of
science and technology. Others assert an alterna-
tive system of ethics, or the values pursued in
defining good or striving for the good life. Some,
like skinheads or KKK members, may be quite
conservative in their definition of the good life;
others are libertarian, advocating for people to
‘‘do their own thing.’’ Still other countercultures
offer alternative aesthetic standards by which fash-
ion, taste, and beauty are judged. Punk or ac-
id rock musical movements, performance or
postmodernist art movements, and bohemian or
hippie fashion movements were all aesthetic state-
ments that incorporated a radical rejection of the
standards of conventional taste and its connection
to conventional values. Thus, entire countercultural
movements may be based on their advocacy of
these competing beliefs.

COUNTERCULTURES AND SOCIAL

CHANGE

Due to their intense opposition to the dominant
culture, countercultures are variously regarded
as ‘‘engines of social change, symbols and effects
of change, or mere faddist epiphenomena’’ (Yinger
1982, p. 285). Examining these in reverse order,
countercultures are often considered mutations
of the normative social order, encompassing such
drastic lifestyle changes that they invoke deep
ambivalence and persecution. Most major
countercultural mutations appear in the form of

religious movements. Other countercultures arise

out of underlying or developing societal stress:

rapid political or economic change; demographic

transformations in the population (age, gender,

location); a swift influx of new ideas; drastic escala-

tion or diminishment of hopes or aspirations;

weakening of ties to primary support circles (fami-

lies, neighborhoods, work groups); and the ero-

sion of meaning in the deepest symbols and rituals

of society. These factors are then augmented by

communication among people sharing such expe-

riences or beliefs, leading them to coalesce into

normatively and ideologically integrated groups.

Countercultures can also precipitate social change

if the norms and values they champion are incor-

porated into the mainstream. In commenting on

the 1960s student movement, Chief Justice War-

ren Burger of the United States Supreme Court

stated that ‘‘the turbulent American youth, whose

disorderly acts [I] once ‘resented,’ actually had

pointed the way to higher spiritual values’’ (cited

in Yinger 1977, p. 848). Lasting influence may not

always result from major countercultural move-

ments, as witnessed by the rapid erosion in influ-

ence of Mao’s cultural revolution after his death,

yet it is possible. This occurs through a cultural

dialectic, wherein each existing system, containing

antithetical, contradictory ideas, gives rise to the

oppositional values of a counterculture. These are

ultimately incorporated into a future new order.

COUNTERCULTURE CASE STUDIES

While the student movement of the 1960s was

undoubtedly the largest and most influential coun-

terculture to arise in the United States, a review of

three more contemporary American countercultures

may yield further insight into the parameters and

character of these movements. Let us focus on the

Hare Krishnas, punks, and survivalists.

The Hare Krishna movement, also known as

the International Society for Krishna Conscious-

ness (ISKCON), is one of the religious movements

that became popular in the United States during

the great ‘‘cult’’ period of the 1970s (Judah 1974;

Rochford 1985). Its rise after the decline of the

1960s student movement is not coincidental, for

many people who were former hippies or who

were influenced by or seeking the ideals and values

of the 1960s turned toward new religions (Tipton