History of Modern Crafts: Counterculture Movement

Counterculture and Dominant Culture

• The term "counterculture" was coined by sociologist Milton Yinger in the 1960s and refers to a culture that opposes the dominant culture's values and norms.
• The dominant culture is not necessarily the culture of the majority population, but rather the culture of those in power who control and disseminate certain values through media, education, government policies, and social institutions.

Counterculture vs Subculture

• Counterculture exists in opposition to the dominant culture, while subculture is a subset of the dominant culture that focuses on a niche element without opposing mainstream values.
• Subcultures exist within the dominant culture without aiming to disrupt its organization, values, or societal structure.

Hippie Counterculture

• The hippie movement emerged in the United States and spread globally, with impacts lasting until today.
• Hippies opposed certain values of the dominant culture and created alternative ways of living and working, strongly intertwined with ideas of craftsmanship and DIY practices.

DIY Ethos

• DIY (doing it yourself) is a movement comprised of ordinary people who build or repair daily items without the aid of experts.
• DIY is practiced by a large and diverse number of people, both individuals and groups, with different intentions and goals, which can be political or not.

Personal is Political

• The DIY ethos within the hippie movement is related to the slogan "the personal is political," which suggests that personal actions and choices have wider social and political implications.
• This idea is also associated with the second-wave feminist movement, which aimed to understand how personal experiences were tied to socially imposed expectations and structures.

Historical Context

• The 1890s-1920s saw the American Arts and Crafts movement, with the creation of arts and crafts societies, schools, and utopian communities.
• The early 1900s saw the establishment of socialist, communist, and anarchist colonies and cooperatives.
• The 1910s, 1930s, and 1970s saw the back-to-the-land movement, characterized by a migration from urban to rural areas to engage in self-sufficient and autonomous practices.
• The 1970s saw the expansion of the environmental movement, feminist movement, New Age spiritualities, and the rediscovery of regional and indigenous identities.

Hippie Counterculture Practices

• DIY (do-it-yourself)
• DIT (do-it-together)
• Practices of care and repair
• Countercultural practitioners grew their own food, built their own houses, spun and sewed their own clothes, repaired their own cars, and even gave birth and taught their children at home.
• They shared and spread their knowledge in magazines, etc. (e.g., Whole Earth catalogue)

Against and For

• Against:
  • Capitalistic commodification and consumerism
  • Large-scale production
  • Alienating work
  • Subordination to and dependence on big corporations and employment
  • Individualism
  • Competition and profit-driven
  • Knowledge and resource control and monopoly
  • Environmental exploitation and destruction
  • “Ready-made”, industrial and prescribed lives
• For:
  • Exchange, and collective management of goods and services
  • Human-scale production, self-production
  • Pleasurable, meaningful, dignified, self-determined, creative, and useful work
  • Autonomy, self-competence, self-reliance, and self-sufficiency
  • Communitarianism and collaboration
  • Solidarity and social contribution and responsibility-driven
  • Knowledge and resource sharing
  • Sustainability
  • “Handmade lives” and alternative lifestyles

Criticisms and Legacy

• Criticisms of the hippie movement include:
  • Reproduction of gender roles and stereotypes
  • Co-optation by capitalism
  • Focus on lifestyle changes and individual freedom rather than political engagement and social justice activism
  • Romanticization of scarcity and poverty
  • Rebels without a purpose
  • Utopianism dreaming that had no real-world impacts
• Legacy of the hippie movement includes:
  • Creation of alternative and localized economic systems
  • Impact on today's economies of sharing and collaboration, such as Wikipedia, open-source software and hardware, tool lending libraries, and more.