Class, Gender and the Vote: Historical Perspectives from New Zealand (Otago History Series)

In recent times the study of social history has been on the rise, changing focus from merely history from the angle of politics, high culture and foreign policy to new areas: health, demographics, families, crime, women and immigration, amongst others. However, with this awakening of social history being a large collection of different pasts amongst the people of New Zealand, much incoherence has also come about in the field. The editors of this book set out to prove that quantitative history can rectify this problem. The essays in this volume represent some of the work produced by two major research projects—the Caversham Project, based at the University of Otago, and the New Zealand Working Class Conservatism Project at the University of Canterbury. The essays examine the studies of social structure in the twentieth century; the effect of class and gender on voting in twentieth century elections; the cultural dimension of class and politics; and a final section provides detailed advice on the electronic processing of data.