Description
Through a sociological analysis of the countercultural print culture of the 1970s, Sam Binkley investigates the dissemination of these self-loosening narratives and their widespread appeal to America's middle class. He describes the rise of a genre of lifestyle publishing that emerged from a network of small offbeat presses, mostly located on the West Coast. Amateurish and rough in production quality, these popular books and magazines blended Eastern mysticism, Freudian psychology, environmental ecology, and romantic American pastoralism as they offered "expert" advice--about how to be more in touch with the natural world, how to release oneself into trusting relationships with others, and how to delve deeper into the body's rhythms and natural sensuality. Binkley examines dozens of these publications, including the Whole Earth Catalog, Rainbook, the Catalog of Sexual Consciousness, Celery Wine, Domebook, and Getting Clear.
Drawing on the thought of Pierre Bourdieu, Zygmunt Bauman, and others, Binkley explains how self-loosening narratives helped the middle class confront the modernity of the 1970s. As rapid social change and political upheaval eroded middle-class cultural authority, the looser life provided opportunities for self-reinvention through everyday lifestyle choice. He traces this ethos of self-realization through the "yuppie" 1980s to the 1990s and today, demonstrating that what originated as an emancipatory call to loosen up soon evolved into a culture of highly commercialized consumption and lifestyle branding.
Product Details
| Publisher | Duke University Press |
| Publish Date | April 27, 2007 |
| Pages | 336 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Hardback |
| EAN/UPC | 9780822339731 |
| Dimensions | 9.5 X 6.5 X 0.9 inches | 1.3 pounds |
About the Author
Sam Binkley is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Emerson College.
Visit the author's blog.
Reviews
"With nearly 600 bibliographic entries, Getting Loose is among the most thorough studies of its kind.The book surveys the period in American society when 1960s counterculture developed into the consumer lifestyles we know today. But Binkley does more than simply mark the transition from yippie to yuppy. He shows how the emancipatory impulses of rebellion helped usher in the new world order of unrestrained global capital."--Vince Carducci "Popmatters"
"Getting Loose is a work of historical sociology that both draws on and challenges central theoretical perspectives on consumption and consumer culture, identity, postmodernism and late modernity, post-Fordism, and contemporary moral culture through exceptionally creative analyses of 1970s lifestyle philosophies and practices."--Don Slater, author of Consumer Culture and Modernity
"Getting Loose is an important and quite interesting study of the discourses of the 1970s lifestyle movement. It casts a whole new light not only on that epoch but, more importantly, on its relationship to contemporary self, identity, and the economy, especially consumer culture. Sam Binkley moves comfortably and insightfully between the most abstract of social theories and the most prosaic of social phenomena, using the former to offer new insights into the latter. He presents a panoramic view of the movement from the 1970s era of the loosening of the self to the reality of the early twenty-first century, where 'we're all loose now.'"--George Ritzer, Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland, and founding editor, Journal of Consumer Culture
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