Aldona Jawłowska drogi kontrkultury

SUMMARY
This book is an attempt at a global outlook on the process,
socio-cultural determinants, and consequences of the youth
rebellion which reached its culmination in 1964—1970. The
youth movement in the U.S.A., Great Britain, France,
Holland, Italy, and West Germany is analyzed. In these
countries contestation had much in common and the conflicts
under study were most pronounced. We were especially
interested in the cultural aspects of the movement,
i.e. that fragment of the events and that specific ideological
and artistic creativity which have come to be called
counterculture. Our aim was to show that the youth movement
consists — despite its multiple forms of expression
and its ideological inconsistencies—in entirely questionning
the capitalist system, the achievements and developmental
objectives of the so-called technological civilization and culture.
The latter are questioned in the name of such values
as egalitarianism and communality but also freedom and
inviolability of individual life, self-actualization, and self-
-expression as opposed to the stiff rules of the game obligatory
in the social system against which the fight is launched,
consumer attitudes, and the prevalence of possessions
which limit relationships with nature and with other human
beings.
The book consists of three parts. Part One presents the
events as if from without; it is an attempt to reconstruct
the progress of the fight along with the most significant
facts and at determining the scope of the phenomenon. In
this part we present the main sources of protest and the
mechanisms of dissemination of its range and causes. A characteristic
phenomenon here is the overlapping of simulta-
21 — A. Jawlowska 321