COUNTER CULTURE, COUNTER MEMORY AND PARTICIPATION - Essay Example

At some point in the 1970s, global economic depression destroyed the illusion of post-World-War-II prosperity and the idea of a ‘post-scarcity society’ (Kellner 1995, 3) was substituted by discourses demanding rationalising expectations, restrictions to growth, and the inevitability of economic and state reform (Kellner 1995); such reform occurred in most regions of the capitalist world throughout the 1980s under the command of conventional regimes which curtail social welfare agendas, while strengthening the military sector and adding to national deficits, with enormous debts that remain unpaid (Jameson 1991).

The past decades have also witnessed the downfall of Soviet communism and the culmination of the Cold War (Sebestyen 2009). Communist and capitalist countries, after World War II, begin vying for political, economic, and cultural supremacy. Forces in both leagues provoked hot and cold armed conflicts, leading to intense militarisation and overt and covert hostilities between replacements of the superpowers (Katz 2000). Outrageous military organisations on both blocs and weapons of mass destruction generated an edgy, fearful age, where fanatic and suspicious bureaucrats could pressure citizens into recognising social policies that mostly benefited and profited the powerful and greedy, while delaying major social reform and the construction of a more fair and reasonable social order (Sebestyen 2009).

Innovative technologies have also appeared in the recent decades which have altered the orders of everyday life and impressively reorganised work and leisure (Klein 2001). These new globalised infrastructures and networks also offer effective types of social control through more effective, ingeniously hidden strategies of propaganda and manipulation (Klein 2001). Definitely, their very presence might weaken political forces and keep individuals securely installed within