Helen McCarthy
Researcher
Helen joined Demos in September 2002 as a researcher.Her research interests are in the area of gender and race equality, community development, and public services reform. She is co-author of Inside Out: Rethinking Inclusive Communities (February 2003) and London Calling: how mobile technologies will transform the capital (October 2003). She is currently managing a new project on social inclusion in partnership with the WRVS.Helen is co-founder of Thinkingwomen, a...
at 5:40pm
on Friday, 19th November 2004
One of the most significant forms of hegemony wielded by the dominant culture is the power to determine the nature of its own countercultures. Or so says this review of a new(ish) book about the rise of 'hip consumerism' - that is, the blending of counter-cultural ideas, values, images and slogans by business people and marketers with their consumer capitalist projects.
This won't be news to readers of David Brooks' Bobos in Paradise (2000), or indeed anyone who watches TV or cinema ads these days with their multiple appeals to hedonistic youth and oppositional identities. The most striking aspect of this phenomenon though for me is its chronology - the author dates it to the '68 moment itself, arguing that the impulse to cash in on counter-cultural awakenings was present pretty much at the birth of the student, feminist and other revolutionary movements. I had always assumed that hip consumerism was a product of Generation X - a partly ironic, partly poignant appropriation of their parents progressive legacy. But apparently not.
One of the most significant forms of hegemony wielded by the dominant culture is the power to determine the nature of its own countercultures. Or so says this review of a new(ish) book about the rise of 'hip consumerism' - that is, the blending of counter-cultural ideas, values, images and slogans by business people and marketers with their consumer capitalist projects.
This won't be news to readers of David Brooks' Bobos in Paradise (2000), or indeed anyone who watches TV or cinema ads these days with their multiple appeals to hedonistic youth and oppositional identities. The most striking aspect of this phenomenon though for me is its chronology - the author dates it to the '68 moment itself, arguing that the impulse to cash in on counter-cultural awakenings was present pretty much at the birth of the student, feminist and other revolutionary movements. I had always assumed that hip consumerism was a product of Generation X - a partly ironic, partly poignant appropriation of their parents progressive legacy. But apparently not.
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