Cookbooks for a sacred life - Handbücher der Bewusstseinserweiterung in der transnationalen Jugendkultur der langen 1960er Jahre/ Handbooks for raising awareness in the transnational youth culture of the long 1960s

Abstract

The contribution examines the role of material artifacts for the discourse on “mind expansion” in the youth and alternative culture of the 1970s. It focuses on Ram Dass’ bestseller and guidebook Remember Be Here Now (1971) and Tony Wheeler’s travel guide Across Asia on the Cheap (1973), which represented the first volume of the later Lonely Planet series. The author understands the books as transcultural products par excellence, which give answers to the question of meaning, adaptation and resonance within transnational youth culture during the long 1960s. Just as important is the question about the relevance of the two publications for the agency of youth culture, asking which social practices were triggered by these objects within the popular culture of the 1960s and 1970s and how they subsequently participated in a transnational circuit.