ABSTRACT
Ten years ago the author published a book entitled Youth and the Social Order which examined the position of youth in England in the early nineteen-sixties. 1 The present book was first conceived as a reappraisal of the position of youth after an interval of a decade. The research for the first book was carried out between 1961 and 1963, for the present book between 1971 and 1973. It soon became apparent that a crucial change had occurred: between the first period of research and the second, the ‘counter culture’ had intervened. This intervention was wholly unforeseen in the early ‘sixties. But it has transformed the position and prospects of youth – indeed, it has largely deprived the concept of youth (as ‘teenagers’) of its utility. The focus of the new book therefore became the counter culture itself.
