"Now, before we heave a brick through that window..."

December 4, 2007 9:46 AM

Asking for a friend: Where can I, a mainstream whitebread exemplar, find useful info about counterculture movements that doesn't read like dry scholarship and actually gives one a feel for how it works?

In particular, he's looking for real-world examples of initial creation, in-group communication, and organization with a focus on the use of new technologies.

posted by beaucoupkevin to society & culture (16 comments total)

Steal this link. (Read more from Abbie Hoffman, too.)
posted by cog_nate at 9:51 AM on December 4, 2007

You might find some good answers in this thread about ideas about consensus building and anarchist processes. A lot of the examples are about how this stuff works in the real world. Also, part of sort of grokking these ideas will involve some suspension of "these guys are all brick throwing malcontents" preconceptions which your title doesn't do a terribly great job of doing.
posted by jessamyn at 9:51 AM on December 4, 2007 [1 favorite]

Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azzerad shows several ways in which the independent/punk scene developed in the 1980s.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 10:03 AM on December 4, 2007

I really really liked Famous Long Ago by Ray Mungo, which is a memoir of the Liberation News Service, and has a lot of information that directly pertains to the question, including what it's like when things go South. Several people I've given it to have also liked it.

See also TC Boyle's novel Drop City, which is about commune counterculture in contrast with simply living outside the mainstream.
posted by OmieWise at 10:11 AM on December 4, 2007

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test might be what you're looking for.
posted by The World Famous at 10:15 AM on December 4, 2007

There have been lots of good (and many more not so good) autobiographies and biographies written by people involved in 1960s and 1970s movement activism in recent years, e.g.: Thai Jones' A Radical Line: From the Labor Movement to the Weather Underground, One Family's Century of Conscience and Bill Ayer's Fugitive Days. There have also been lots of works of fiction drawing on those same events, such as Eat the Document by Dana Spiotta, American Woman by Susan Choi, The Darling by Russell Banks, and The Company You Keep by Neil Gordon. (I took that list of four books from here, but have read all four.) There are also some documentaries -- I liked The Weather Underground from 2002.

For a vivid, if incomplete, look inside the urban guerrilla movement in Brazil, the film Four Days in September is really good; the film The Year When My Parents Went on Vacation is an achingly beautiful portrayal of the same time through the eyes of a small boy.

If what you are looking for is more recent activism, you might want to start with writers like Naomi Klein, and all of the articles (and perhaps books?) people have written about the various World Social Forums -- here is a short article by Peter Marcuse on the recent US Social Forum, for example. Writers like Arundhati Roy have bridged activism and literature, and you might find pieces of what you are looking for in their books.

On rereading the question, I realize I'm not sure if what you are looking for are accounts of underground political struggle (what I've given suggestions for) or countercultural movements, like in the TC Boyle book suggested above, stories about the Rainbow Family, etc. People often conflate the two, but really they are often quite different -- clarifying what you are looking for might help focus the answers.
posted by Forktine at 10:26 AM on December 4, 2007

Also, part of sort of grokking these ideas will involve some suspension of "these guys are all brick throwing malcontents" preconceptions which your title doesn't do a terribly great job of doing.

My apologies to any non-brick-throwing malcontents.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 10:27 AM on December 4, 2007 [1 favorite]

On rereading the question, I realize I'm not sure if what you are looking for are accounts of underground political struggle (what I've given suggestions for) or countercultural movements, like in the TC Boyle book suggested above, stories about the Rainbow Family, etc. People often conflate the two, but really they are often quite different -- clarifying what you are looking for might help focus the answers.

He's looking for examples of both and, specifically, that conflation - social movements and counter-cultural change intermingling with the political.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 10:42 AM on December 4, 2007

Democracy is in the Streets by Jim Miller. An account of the formation and rise and fall of the Students for a Democratic Society (out of which the Weather Underground formed).
posted by proj at 10:52 AM on December 4, 2007

Ed Abbey's Monkey Wrench Gang. Founded the eco-terror movement, and reads like...well, a charm. Gads of fun.

Also possibly a movie soon. It's been in production hell for several years, though.
posted by SlyBevel at 10:53 AM on December 4, 2007

The movie Beyond Black Rock is partly about the Burning Man event, but a lot of it has to do with the year-round organization that makes the event happen. It doesn't delve into technology issues, but the filmmakers did sit in on some planning meetings, so you do get a sense of that.

Burners don't ascribe to any one political or organizational philosophy; most would describe the organization that puts a burn together as a "do-ocracy": if you want something to happen, do it. Having been involved in the planning for a regional burn, I can tell you this: burners use typical online-communication tools. Wikis, mailing lists, Basecamp. In some cases, someone will code up a custom web app for a specific purpose. Tribe.net is disproportionately popular among burners, although it is used for chat and group notices, not for planning (AFAIK).
posted by adamrice at 10:57 AM on December 4, 2007

There's a few interesting chapters in the first half of Can't Stop, Won't Stop that deal with the main personalities in the Bronx gang scene of the mid-seventies, through interviews and other primary sources. It's a really good read; it handles more of what went on on a day-to-day basis than some dry sociological overview.
posted by electric_counterpoint at 11:02 AM on December 4, 2007

Rap Attack by David Toop
posted by rhizome at 11:05 AM on December 4, 2007

The American Radical is a fantastic biographical survey of the many men and women who have worked to advance American society.

Topics range from standards like Fredrich Douglas

to the iconic Mother Jones

to the iconoclastic Emma Goldman

to dancer Isadora Duncan

It is lively written with a section on each person so if you don't like what you are reading you can skip ahead. Or if you are really digging a specific theme you can skip ahead.
posted by munchingzombie at 11:07 AM on December 4, 2007

Cannot recommend Subculture: The Meaning of Style by Dick Hebdige enough. It takes as its subject punk in the UK in the 70s. It's a relatively foundational book in the field of cultural studies and is a great read to boot. It's little. It's beautiful. It's great.
posted by wemayfreeze at 11:47 AM on December 4, 2007

My uncle wrote a book called Sleeping Where I Fall that was a pretty interesting account of being inside of the hippie commune movement in the 60s talking about what they were trying to get accomplished in a political sense and how they went about it. It's a good 60's memoir that isn't just "yeah man the drugs were good and the parties were awesome!" I suggest checking it out, it's very well written. There's a chapter online which was reworked for the book but you get an idea.
posted by jessamyn at 6:33 PM on December 4, 2007