Special Interview: Nostalgia for the Superego (w/Sam Binkley)

Matthew sits down with Sam Binkley, Professor of Sociology at Emerson College in Boston to discuss his 2007 book Getting Loose: Lifestyle Consumption in the 1970s.

We cited this very helpful work as we dug into the sociology of conspirituality for our own upcoming book. Here’s a thumbnail of Binkley’s argument:

The 1970s ushered in a period of “getting loose” in relation to the body, work expectations, family relations, and political allegiances. This happened as the great moral and political questions of the 1960s deflated without resolution, even as they enshrined looser social mores around sex and finding meaningful work. The cultural yearning for structural change found its home in the project of the self, facilitated by an accelerated consumerism that expanded the conflation of agency with consumption. Getting Loose characterizes this inward turn as a retreat from the terrors of revolutionary freedom.

Show Notes

Getting Loose — Binkley