Erica Carter
Erica Carter teaches Cultural Studies at the University of Warwick. Recently, she published How German is She? Postwar West German Reconstruction and the consuming Woman (1996), in which she explores how the development of a "social market economy" after 1949 gave a new centrality to consumers as key players in the economic life of the (German) nation and in that process gave women a new public significance. Carter argues that concepts of nationhood survived in the rhetorics of public policy and in popular culture of the period.
Carter's (1984) interesting argument regarding young women and their relationship to consumerism and the market owes much to early feminist critique. Carter insists that the "image industries" are acutely aware of gender difference which operates as a "dominant variable for the construction of consumer groups." She takes the youth subculture theorists to task for not recognizing this. In this case, she focuses on the female consumer in post-war (West) Germany (Gray and McGuigan, 1997, p. 92).
Alice in the Consumer Wonderland
1. introduction
Since the 1970s, theorists of youth subcultures in Britain have appropriated the notion of "style" from marketers of teenage fashion commodities to study oppositional subcultures in the post-war period. Many analysts of sub-cultural deviance and opposition dislike the plastic glamour of commercialized youth culture; they notice subversions of dominant forms (Carter, p. 104). Appropriating commodities from fashion, music, and media industries, subcultural youths reassemble them into symbolic systems of their own, which strike chords of disenchantment, rebellion, and resistance. The analyses themselves are founded on a number of unspoken opposi...
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Although, Conventional wisdom dictates that the age at which children started work was connected to the poverty of the family. Griffith presents two autobiographies to put across her point. Autobiography of Edward Davis who lacked even the basic necessities of life because of his father’s heavy drinking habit and was forced to join work at a small age of six, whereas the memoir of Richard Boswell tells the opposite. He was raised up in an affluent family who studied in a boarding school. He was taken out of school at the age of thirteen to become a draper’s apprentice.
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In conclusion It has become clear to me through studying theses texts that the counterculture movement of the 1960’s was one of great importance, without it we wouldn’t live in the society we do today and yet so many of the ideals and goals of the movement were not achieved. Western society is consumed by consumerism and the entrapments of everyday working life. There is still oppression and war rampant many countries: North Korea, Somalia, Syria, and Uzbekistan, have been named as having the lowest standards for both political rights and civil liberties by political watchdog organisations such as Freedom House. Although it seems that we have come a long way, I am not entirely convinced that the counterculture movement was a success.
Currie, Elliot. 2005. The Road to Whatever: Middle-Class Culture and the Crisis of Adolescence. New York: Metropolitan Books.
Paula Fass’s The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920's delves into the social and cultural climate of the 1920’s middle-class youth in America. Fass observes the multidimensional dynamics of the post-World War I society as citizens adjust to pertinent matters such as industrialization, prohibition and immigration. Amidst the ongoing social, political and economical issues of the early twentieth century, youth played an active role in contemporary life. Adolescents responded to issues through altering their habits, behaviors and viewpoints. Their responses became evident in the public setting and American culture evolved. The transformation of American culture was spearheaded by youth who questioned and went against cultural norms of past generations. Societal changes were visible through family, education, socialization, fashion and style and dating and sexuality.
For nearly half of a century, fragments of our society have continually made outward attempts to create and popularize movements that try to ‘go against’, ‘take over’ or ‘change’ popular culture; in even more far-fetched examples, ‘change’ society as a whole. This idea, as referred to by Roszak in the 1960’s, is commonly known as “counterculture”. A counterculture movement takes one or multiple social norms from established culture that it is in opposition to, and fights said norms. This idea of “culture jamming”, a term coined by the San Franciso area band Negativland, is built on a hope that a counterculture movement can reshape the norms it tries to destroy, into ones which suit its’ needs and ideologies. In the vast majority of cases, the objective of counterculture has not even remotely been reached; in fact, most attempts have failed miserably, unable to attract even the most minute amount of noteworthy attention or following.
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The counterculture of the 1960s is believed to originate from the post-war environment. It is explicated that the research conducted by cultural history professor, Fred Turner from Stanford, indicates that the cultural shift within the framework of the 1940s and 1950s had influenced the appearance of revolutionary individualism of the 1960s counterculture (Winterbottom).
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Mann writes this story shortly after the first World War through the eyes of a German Professor. The story takes place in Munich, Germany in the year 1926 where the Professor and his family prepare themselves for a party in the late afternoon (Mann 2). The results of the Great War are present throughout the entir...
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Generally, in the 60s people’s dressing was stilted, unattractive and confined (Tracy Tolkien., 2002). However, young people experienced the highest incomes period after the Second World War; therefore, they began to put more attention outside the basic human supply. Hence, the young boys and girls were start desired some fresh elements to add i...