Approaches to the study of the phenomenon of counterculture: the attempt of typology

Abstract

In the article the author analyzes the directions of studying the phenomenon of counterculture in Western science. An attempt is also made to typologize these scientific approaches. The term is first encountered in the work of Talcott Parsons «Social System» in 1951. The term is used in the context of a discussion on the ideology of subculture movements and deviant groups. His term sounds like «counter-culture». In a somewhat modified writing, with an expanded description of the term, it is used by American sociologist J. Milton Jinger in 1960. His term «contraculture» in English first encountered in 1960. The term gained its scientific and public popularity in 1969 after Theodore Roszak`s publication “The Making of a Counter Culture”. He used this term to describe countercultural, subcultural movements in the United States of the 1960s, including the hippies, the «New Left». The term also was related to their critical program, as well as to characterizing an alternative society, whose creation was propagated, and partly carried out by the representatives of the movements of the sixties. This approach characterizes counterculture in a narrow sense. In the broad sense, it does not connected to a concrete time period and defines a set of ideas, values, world outlook, which oppose the official basic culture. After investigating the views of scholars on counterculture, since the 1970s the author identifies three different directions, divided by the criterion of relation to counterculture. Among them are apologetic, critical and balanced approaches. To the apologetic approach belongs the work of researchers, which is characterized by a clearly positive attitude to counterculture, social and political aspects of its activities. Often there are some critical remarks but they do not change the general picture of the author’s commitment to the phenomenon. Critical approach include researchers who consider counterculture as a negative social phenomenon and practice. The most radical representatives include Daniel Bell, Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter and others. Balanced approach combines the work of many researchers, which combines efforts to investigate counterculture as an objective phenomenon, while taking into account its weaknesses and strengths. At the same time, the authors recognize the importance of existence of the phenomenon, its influence on socio-cultural and political processes. Criticism relates to radical cultural practices, political extremism and excessive interest in psychedelics among representatives of counterculture. The approaches of researchers to this direction vary, from the «pioneer» of research of the phenomenon J. Milton Jinger, and to the researchers who tried to conduct research directly inside of the countercultural movement, in particular Kenneth Keniston, and others.