Punk and Disorderly

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1970s Britain
1970s punk
A01=Karen Fournier
Author_Karen Fournier
Category=AVM
Category=JBSA
Category=JBSF1
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_music
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
female punk
Penetration
Siouxsie and the Banshees
social alienation
The Raincoats
The Slits
women in punk
X-Ray Spex

Product details

  • ISBN 9798765124758
  • Weight: 340g
  • Dimensions: 150 x 226mm
  • Publication Date: 05 Feb 2026
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Paperback
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A discussion of the 1970s British punk scene, this book foregrounds the participation of women as performers and songwriters in early British punk, and examines how women in the scene crafted expressions of social alienation that were informed by the intersection of classism and sexism.

Early British punk rock is often associated with male bands like the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned, the Buzzcocks, or The Stranglers, whose songs capture and reflect a historical moment in Britain that was defined by unemployment, nationwide strikes, racial strife, and the growing sense of hopelessness within a seemingly deteriorating British Empire. While lesser-known, the work of female punk bands like Penetration, The Raincoats, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Slits, and X-Ray Spex also engaged with these themes, but added a gendered perspective on what it meant to be “an underdog” in Britain in the 1970s.

Through a close reading of punk art, fashion, and music, this book examines how female contributors to the early British scene responded uniquely to the alienation expressed by their male peers, and demonstrates how social alienation was inflected by the intersection of classism and sexism in the work of those women who helped to shape the early British scene.

Karen Fournier is Associate Professor of Music at the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance at the University of Michigan, USA. Her research focuses principally on issues of gender, sexuality, and class in British and American punk rock in the 1970s. She is the author of The Words and Music of Alanis Morissette (2015).

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