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BOOK REVIEW
| Miles Fairburn and Erik Olssen (eds), Class, Gender and the Vote: Historical Perspectives from New Zealand, University of Otago Press, Dunedin, 2005. pp. 288. NZ $45.00 paper.
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| New Zealand was one of the earliest democracies and the first to introduce female suffrage in 1893. It also introduced socially progressive policies, such as the welfare state at an early stage from the late nineteenth century. The role of class in determining these political outcomes has been a major theme of New Zealand historiography. The editors of this volume, Miles Fairburn and Erik Olssen, have been major contributors to this dialogue. Since the late 1970s, Olssen has led the Caversham Project, creating a database for 70,000 persons on occupational mobility and class, residential segregation, work, and sites and processes of gendering, from directories, electoral rolls, marriage and death records, the 1937 Housing Survey, and records of friendly societies and churches for the adult population of a socially diverse borough of Dunedin, the fourth city of New Zealand. The period covered expanded from 1902–22 to 1893–1938, and the original geographical boundaries expanded to neighbouring boroughs and beyond. From 1998 Fairburn and Stephen Haslett led another project on working-class conservatism, exploring the proposition that the electoral domination of right-wing political parties in New Zealand for much of the twentieth century was based upon an abnormally high degree of working-class support as a result of high levels of home ownership and cross-class mixing. Fairburn and Haslett examined the social foundations of voting patterns in 11 general elections during 1911–51 in the ten largest provincial towns, by analysing databases created from census data, street directories and polling booth returns. Together these projects have been responsible for a considerable revision of New Zealand history, indicating a less egalitarian society than traditionally depicted, within a high degree of occupational mobility, and clarifying the class-basis for voting. This collection, the latest of numerous publications by various authors from the projects, combines insights from both, arising out of a joint 2003 conference involving both research teams. |
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The book has four parts. Part 1 includes four studies of class and social structure. Fairburn and Haslett examine the social composition of household heads in New Zealand's ten largest provincial towns to evaluate the impact of major upheavals, including industrial conflict at the beginning and end of the period, two world wars, depression, and cold war. They find greater stability than previously suggested, although war and depression impacted on the unskilled. The greatest impact on social structure, however, came from long-term structural economic change and expansion in government pensions after 1935 which regulated access to employment. Michael Smith's 'Residential Segregation and the Inter-war Christchurch Experience' confirms the traditional notion of a residential class-divide in the southern city, albeit a complex one which did not entail homogenised district social structures. John Stenhouse's examination of the relationship between class and religion in Southern Dunedin during 1890–1940, finds that the working class, female dominated churches of the area played a major role in shaping of social consciousness. |
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Part 2 focuses upon social structure and mobility. Olssen demonstrates the importance of class, ethnicity and sex in determining marriage age and choice of partner in Southern Dunedin for 1881–1938. Eleanor Cottle shows that a substantial degree of social mobility occurred amongst rural nineteenth century farm labourers in Canterbury. Howard Peel examines the social origins and occupational destinations of boys from one high school from 1862–1902 to reveal the importance of secondary education in structuring male occupational opportunities. |
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Part 3 is concerned with the impact of class and gender on twentieth century electoral behaviour. Linda Moore demonstrates that until the post war era female electoral participation was lower than male, but regional exceptions to general patterns were always present, often as a result of the activity of political organisations. Steve McLeod's 'Did Farmers Really "lurch to the Left" in 1935?' represents an important revision of longstanding convention that a shift in farmers' votes was largely responsible for the election of the first Labour government. Steve Kerr's case study also identifies the various place-specific factors that allowed Clyde Carr's unlikely long tenure for Labour in Timaru for 1928–62. |
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Part 4 includes two cultural studies of class: Lydia Bloy's analysis of class-language in the 1930s and 1940s, and Seren Wendelken's study of the iconography and sources of cartoons in the labour journal, the Maoriland Worker for 1911–12. David Hood concludes with a useful essay on the technical issues associated with electronic processing of large datasets. |
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The book presents key findings of two major projects in an accessible style, and demonstrates a nice balance between the general and the particular. Its main inspiration has been US quantitative historiographical methodology. Nothing quite like this has been done on a major scale in Australia yet. |
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| Auckland University of Technology |
RAYMOND MARKEY | |
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