Nostalgia Interviews With Chris Deacy

It was a huge pleasure to meet Alison Robertson for this week’s Nostalgia Interview. Alison’s research is in the area of subcultures – specifically BDSM and kink as religious practice. Alison refers to how this is a notoriously sensitive area – and about how hard it can be to get people to talk to her.  Alison discuss the insider vs. outsider question and we learn that Alison is fascinated by areas where boundaries blur. Her participants might reject the label ‘religion’ but not the things that Alison believes make it a religion. Some people have a very fixed understanding of religion. Alison talks about the therapeutic or confessional benefit for her participants when they talk about BDSM, and how some of them both wanted to be identified and didn’t want to be identified at the same time. We discuss stereotypes and the judgements that people think may be attached to what they do, and we look at this in the context of nostalgia and the past. Alison’s first degree was in Law and she is still in tou