Getting Loose

[Dave Monroe]

Binkley, Sam.  Getting Loose: Lifestyle Consumption
   in the 1970s.  Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2007.

>From “getting loose” to “letting it all hang out,” the
1970s were filled with exhortations to free oneself
from artificial restraints and to discover oneself in
a more authentic and creative life. In the wake of the
counterculture of the 1960s, anything that could be
made to yield to a more impulsive vitality was
reinvented in a looser way. Food became purer,
clothing more revealing, sex more orgiastic, and home
decor more rustic and authentic.

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.

http://www.dukeupress.edu/books.php3?isbn=978-0-8223-3989-2


 
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