INTRODUCTION

In sociology, counterculture is a term used to describe a cultural group whose values and norms are at odds with those of the social mainstream, a cultural equivalent of a political Opposition. In casual practice, in the general press the term was used to refer to the youth rebellion that swept North America and Western Europe in the 1960s.

The counterculture of the 1960s began in the United States as a reaction against the rigid social norms of the 1950s, segregation in the Deep South, and the Vietnam War.

Tensions developed along generational lines during the sixties regarding experimentation with drugs, race relations, sexual morals and women's rights. New cultural forms emerged. The youth of the United States did not join into one social scene, but instead divided into several different movements each wanting change on a subject more than another but they still shared the same views.

In this courseware we focused on the key “countercultural” movements in the sixties: the culture of the hippies, the antiwar movement, student radicalism, yippies, feminism and sexual revolution, as well as the phenomena of drug usage during the 1960s.