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Revisiting 1960s Countercultural Back-to-the-Land Migration and Its Millennial Resurgence

Keith Halfacree Orcid Logo

The Global Sixties, Volume: 15, Issue: 1-2, Pages: 43 - 78

Swansea University Author: Keith Halfacree Orcid Logo

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Abstract

“Getting one’s head together” by attempting to go “back-to-the-land” – move into the countryside to live more “naturally” – remains a stereotype of “hippies” from the long Sixties. Yet, while studies of this phenomenon exist, both academic and as memoirs, it has not been researched in detail as much...

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Published in: The Global Sixties
ISSN: 2770-8888 2770-890X
Published: Informa UK Limited 2022
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URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa61533
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spelling v2 61533 2022-10-11 Revisiting 1960s Countercultural Back-to-the-Land Migration and Its Millennial Resurgence 41fab8d4f5894e6afbe7195678e2b7e3 0000-0002-1529-609X Keith Halfacree Keith Halfacree true false 2022-10-11 SGE “Getting one’s head together” by attempting to go “back-to-the-land” – move into the countryside to live more “naturally” – remains a stereotype of “hippies” from the long Sixties. Yet, while studies of this phenomenon exist, both academic and as memoirs, it has not been researched in detail as much as might have been expected, certainly not in terms of how those involved lived “off the land” and/or outside the US. This paper seeks to resurrect this topic for serious academic consideration. A call to revisit back-to-the-land comes not just from abiding fascination with the Sixties but because this countercultural movement fed into the contemporaneous emergence of a broader and still notable population trend across much of the global North of a “return” to rural living: counterurbanization. Moreover, recent decades have seen the resurgence of countercultural back-to-the-land, building on its long 1960s legacy but now underpinned by a more explicit search for environmentally sustainable lifestyles. This review of back-to-the-land, after noting the demographic place today of counterurbanization, focuses on an overview of long Sixties back-to-the-land and then on the early years of its ongoing resurgence. For both periods, attention is given to how back-to-the-landers have been studied, what their motivations are, whether they move as family or group, how long their rural life tends to last, what opportunities and barriers they have met, and what evidence there is of land work. It is concluded that back-to-the-land today shows considerable continuity with its 1960s heyday but has been more proactive in its spatialized rejection of key everyday life aspects and experiences within contemporary (urban and suburban) mainstream society. In short, a key Sixties phenomenon remains very much alive today but in a more mature form. Journal Article The Global Sixties 15 1-2 43 78 Informa UK Limited 2770-8888 2770-890X Back-to-the-land, counterurbanization, rural living, migration, hippies, alternative living 3 7 2022 2022-07-03 10.1080/27708888.2022.2133275 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/27708888.2022.2133275 COLLEGE NANME Geography COLLEGE CODE SGE Swansea University SU Library paid the OA fee (TA Institutional Deal) Swansea University 2023-06-28T16:06:40.1090199 2022-10-11T16:18:45.2887848 Faculty of Science and Engineering School of Biosciences, Geography and Physics - Geography Keith Halfacree 0000-0002-1529-609X 1 61533__27620__a6ecf1aadf9a4a6fa495cdd4f8eb2bc2.pdf 61533.VOR.pdf 2023-05-26T12:02:08.0105133 Output 1022525 application/pdf Version of Record true © 2022 The Author(s). Distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). true eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
title Revisiting 1960s Countercultural Back-to-the-Land Migration and Its Millennial Resurgence
spellingShingle Revisiting 1960s Countercultural Back-to-the-Land Migration and Its Millennial Resurgence
Keith Halfacree
title_short Revisiting 1960s Countercultural Back-to-the-Land Migration and Its Millennial Resurgence
title_full Revisiting 1960s Countercultural Back-to-the-Land Migration and Its Millennial Resurgence
title_fullStr Revisiting 1960s Countercultural Back-to-the-Land Migration and Its Millennial Resurgence
title_full_unstemmed Revisiting 1960s Countercultural Back-to-the-Land Migration and Its Millennial Resurgence
title_sort Revisiting 1960s Countercultural Back-to-the-Land Migration and Its Millennial Resurgence
author_id_str_mv 41fab8d4f5894e6afbe7195678e2b7e3
author_id_fullname_str_mv 41fab8d4f5894e6afbe7195678e2b7e3_***_Keith Halfacree
author Keith Halfacree
author2 Keith Halfacree
format Journal article
container_title The Global Sixties
container_volume 15
container_issue 1-2
container_start_page 43
publishDate 2022
institution Swansea University
issn 2770-8888
2770-890X
doi_str_mv 10.1080/27708888.2022.2133275
publisher Informa UK Limited
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department_str School of Biosciences, Geography and Physics - Geography{{{_:::_}}}Faculty of Science and Engineering{{{_:::_}}}School of Biosciences, Geography and Physics - Geography
url http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/27708888.2022.2133275
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description “Getting one’s head together” by attempting to go “back-to-the-land” – move into the countryside to live more “naturally” – remains a stereotype of “hippies” from the long Sixties. Yet, while studies of this phenomenon exist, both academic and as memoirs, it has not been researched in detail as much as might have been expected, certainly not in terms of how those involved lived “off the land” and/or outside the US. This paper seeks to resurrect this topic for serious academic consideration. A call to revisit back-to-the-land comes not just from abiding fascination with the Sixties but because this countercultural movement fed into the contemporaneous emergence of a broader and still notable population trend across much of the global North of a “return” to rural living: counterurbanization. Moreover, recent decades have seen the resurgence of countercultural back-to-the-land, building on its long 1960s legacy but now underpinned by a more explicit search for environmentally sustainable lifestyles. This review of back-to-the-land, after noting the demographic place today of counterurbanization, focuses on an overview of long Sixties back-to-the-land and then on the early years of its ongoing resurgence. For both periods, attention is given to how back-to-the-landers have been studied, what their motivations are, whether they move as family or group, how long their rural life tends to last, what opportunities and barriers they have met, and what evidence there is of land work. It is concluded that back-to-the-land today shows considerable continuity with its 1960s heyday but has been more proactive in its spatialized rejection of key everyday life aspects and experiences within contemporary (urban and suburban) mainstream society. In short, a key Sixties phenomenon remains very much alive today but in a more mature form.
published_date 2022-07-03T16:06:36Z
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