Getting loose : lifestyle consumption in the 1970s
Binkley 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, theCatalog 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
History
xii, 296 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
9780822339731, 9780822339892, 0822339730, 0822339897
74941137
Introduction: Mediated immediacy : living in the now
Of swingers and organization men : loose modernities
Experts unbound : intimate professionals and the value of lifestyle
Book as tool : lifestyle print culture and the West Coast publishing boom
Being one : from knowledge to consciousness in the spaceship society
Loving each other : from phony to real in the new togetherness
Letting it all hang out : from mind to muscle in the relaxed body
Conclusion: Morning in America : pulling in the slack