There’s No Riot Going on – Social Changes from Inside Out. Discourses Surrounding Pop Culture, Authenticity, and Forms of Life in the School Context in the German-speaking Part of Switzerland around 1968

Abstract

This article shows that social change at the end of the 1960s cannot be understood only in terms of large protest movements, but also on a small scale, as in the case studies analysed here, where the mostly unspoken “moral force of the ideal of authenticity” (Taylor, 1991, p. 17) is expressed by a wide variety of actors. Using two case studies from the school context and with pop culture references, the paper examines how the rebellious practices often described as typical of teenagers around 1968 were present not only among adolescents, but also among young adults – and among young teachers. The boundaries and transitions between young and old, between rejection and acceptance of different practices and forms of life (Jaeggi, 2014) seem to be fluid. Practices in the school context and the forms of life of young people are not always clearly distinguishable from the forms of life of young adults. Forms of life and everyday practices – based on insignia from music, from the world of comics, from fashion – were just as influential for the individual as loud protest movements against the “establishment”.