This book, first published in 1990, takes a challenging look at the images constructed by the Press of women's political protest. Focusing on the peace camp at Greenham Common, Alison Young analyses in detail the way in which women protestors are represented in the press as deviant and criminal. Arguing that the criminal justice system and the media rely on each other's definitions of deviance, she investigates in detail how those definitions are constructed and encoded. In the course of her analysis she utilizes concepts of narrative structure, metaphor, the body, the cultural unconscious, and mental as well as social instability. The first and only full-length study of its kind, Femininity in Dissent takes an interdisciplinary approach, questioning traditional methods of criminology and sociology of deviance, and drawing on literary theory, women’s studies and social theory. In articulating cultural forms of regulation and social control, the author provides an analysis of discourse and deviance.

Alison Young