Self-Invention in the Realm of Production: Craft, Beauty, and Community in the American Counterculture, 1964–1978
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Issue Date
2016-08Author
Farber, David
Publisher
University of California Press
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, publisher version
Rights
© 2016 by the Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association
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Show full item recordAbstract
In the 1960s and 1970s, self-avowed members of the counterculture, often based on the west coast and in the Rocky Mountain West, eschewed critics’ stereotypical notions of stoned and indolent hippies and struggled to build an alternative economic system. While rejecting corporate capitalism and consumer acquisitiveness, they built new enterprises, new institutions, new organizational forms, and new practices that gave proof of the possibility of creating economically sustainable, alternative lives. Do-it-yourself practices, especially building one’s own home or repairing one’s own vehicle, promised to free practitioners from working for wages in order to afford consumer goods—even as DIY culture often promoted traditional gender roles. While many of the counterculture’s attempts at escaping the employee-consumer nexus failed or were short-lived, it did succeed in outlining an alternative approach to both production and consumption that has had a continuing impact on American capitalist development.
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Citation
Farber, D. (2016). Self-Invention in the Realm of Production. Pacific Historical Review, 85(3), 408-442.
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