scholarly journals Social Mobility and Class Formation: The Worklife Social Mobility of Men in a New Zealand Suburb, 1902–1928

1999 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-449 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Olssen ◽  
Hamish James
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Political History ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Class Formation ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Political Behaviour ◽  
The Relationship

This paper explores the relationship between social mobility and class formation in a working-class industrial suburb. By establishing the degree of class closure in three periods we can identify the relationship between the country's political history, dominated by the rise of a left-wing Labour Party, and the changing levels of closure. Labour established itself during a period of low mobility then stalled when mobility increased sharply in the 1920s. Comparison with the mobility rates for cities in other countries allows further analysis of the relationship between social structure and political behaviour. Our evidence indicates that voters were not unconscious of the shifting patterns of class rigidity.

‘An intensive study of – feet!’ in two films by Lois Weber: Shoes and The Blot

2021 ◽  
pp. 38-48
Author(s):  
Pamela Hutchinson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Wage Inequality ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Intensive Study ◽  
Lower Middle Class ◽  
Moral Compromise ◽  
The Relationship

In Shoes (1916), Lois Weber re-examines the relationship between shoes and social mobility. Far from guiding the working-class protagonist’s progress, a pair of worn boots trap her into a moral compromise, which destroys her hope of future advancement, either romantically or socially. Weber’s investigation into wage inequality, the rights of women and the influence of consumer culture via footwear continues in The Blot (1921), which revisits the same plot in a lower middle-class milieu and expands on the theme. Here, shoes are again a danger to women, but also an indicator of genteel distress and a cheap, impractical commodity, good only for profiteering rather than practicality.

Social Structure and Party Support in the East Asian Democracies

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian McAllister
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Party System ◽  
East Asian ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Democratic Transitions ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Party Support ◽  
The Comparative Study ◽  
The Relationship

A stable and effective party system depends on consistent and enduring support from social groups. Using the Lipset-Rokkan paradigm as a point of departure, this article tests the relationship between social structure and party support in four East Asian democracies (Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan) and two Western democracies (Australia and New Zealand) using the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. Using Australia and New Zealand as a reference point, the results show that the four Lipset-Rokkan social cleavages are only loosely related to party support in the four East Asian nations, mainly through center-periphery and urban-rural divisions. The absence of an owner-worker cleavage is explained by the suppression of labor-based parties in these countries. More generally, the results suggest the importance of the socializing experiences associated with the democratic transitions in each of the four newer democracies.

The Structure of the German Elites across Regime Changes

2003 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erwin Scheuch
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
Political History ◽  
Modus Operandi ◽  
Regime Changes ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractGermany is an especially apt case to analyze the relationship between regime change and elite continuity. Its political history between 1860 and 1960 is marked by an unusual degree of turmoil. While the first level of leadership in politics, and to a lesser degree in business and administration, was affected by the various regime changes, the levels two and three much less so. The notable characteristic of Germany's social structure is the pervasiveness of corporatism, and this is especially pronounced in levels two and three of the leadership. We concentrated on the periods before 1914, the halfway revolution of 1918-1920, the Weimar Republic in its closing days, the ascent to power of the nazi leadership, the post-1945 attempts of denazification, and finally on the composition and the modus operandi of leadership groups in the 1990s. During all these changes the elites in Germany retained their segmentalized character, with the economic leaders, the bureaucrats, and politicians at the center, the politicians deriving their influence from their function as linking agents in a segmentalized structure. There are indications, however, that an establishment may be in the making.

Labour Party Politics and the Working Class

1976 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Beackon
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Fundamental Change ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Opinion Polls ◽  
Urban Working

By the late 1960s the shift of the Labour party away from its traditional base among the urban working class appeared to be gaining momentum. The opinion polls showed a marked swing of working-class sentiment away from the party, and the policies advanced during the period, especially with regard to prices and incomes and industrial relations, hardly seemed designed to satisfy the redistributive concerns traditionally imputed to the working class. Indeed the government's overriding concern with the problem of the economy during a period in which the Labour party had a large majority over all other parties in the House of Commons was seen by one commentator as the final act of a tragic farce entitled ‘The Decline and Fall of Social Democracy’. Clearly this conclusion was drawn somewhat prematurely: in the 1970s there is fragmented evidence to suggest that the Labour party has regained the votes of a number of its traditional supporters who had previously defected, just as there is evidence that the ‘left’ of the party is asserting itself. However, the events of the early 1970s are not sufficient to refute the proposition that some kind of fundamental change either has occurred, or is occurring, in the relationship between the Labour party and its traditional supporters. Even if the curtain has yet to fall, there is no reason to believe that the play has not begun.

scholarly journals The Labour Party and Education for Socialism

1969 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodney Barker
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Educational Reform ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Sunday Schools ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Better Than

No socialist since Robert Owen has had any excuse for being unaware of the relationship between educational reform and social and political change, and a perception of this relationship was a feature of nineteenth century socialism and liberalism. The attention which the educational principles and policies of socialist, labour, and radical movements in Europe have recently received has thus been well deserved. The socialists have however come off better than those organisations which have been designated as merely “labour”, and two valuable contributions to the literature dealing with Great Britain – Professor Simon's Education and the Labour Movement, 1870–1920, and Dr Reid's article on the Socialist Sunday Schools – are concerned with the programmes and beliefs of left wing socialist bodies, rather than with those of the ideologically more diffuse but politically more important Labour Party. Both these contributions may perhaps profitably be placed in a new perspective by an examination of the attitudes adopted within the Labour Party and within its industrial half-brother the Trades Union Congress, to the problems raised by the content and character, as opposed to the structure and organisation, of the education available to the working class.

scholarly journals Convergence and Divergence: Notes On Comparing Australia and New Zealand Experiences of Industrial Relations

1970 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Neilson
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Joint Project ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
Convergence And Divergence ◽  
The Relationship

This paper attempts to explain the divergence of paths in the field of industrial relations between Australia and New Zealand under Labour in the eighties. Key themes in the paper concern stale autonomy, the relationship between the union movement and the Labour party in each country, and the different strategic contexts within which policies were formulated and pursued. This paper has its origins in a joint project undertaken by Mark Bray and myself, which will eventually come out as a chapter of a book comparing Australia and New Zealand under Labour governments in the eighties. The chapter attempts to explain why there has been increasing divergence between Australian and New Zealand industrial relations regimes in the eighties and nineties. This paper takes up some themes of divergence and convergence which arose while working on the chapter but could not be developed in that forum.

Stratification and Voting Behavior

1982 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
KENNETH WALD
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Organizational Capacity ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
Multivariate Regression Analysis ◽  
Population Census ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Election Results ◽  
The Relationship

Despite agreement on the importance of class in voting behavior, scholars have not integrated research on class-based political behavior with broader theories about the sources of group cohesion in a mass electorate. This article explores the potential for political cohesion among a variety of occupational groups within the British working class. The propensity for collective action in the electoral arena is evaluated in terms of each group's social situation—its differentiation, level of within-group interaction, need for collective effort, and organizational capacity. Using the 1891 population census and general election results from 1885 to 1910, we then observe the relationship between the spatial concentration of each occupational group and the left-wing vote. The results indicate clearly that alternate conceptions of stratification are associated with different directions of class-party relationships and different levels of class-based voting. The results of both correlation and multivariate regression analysis confirm that the level of class voting increased as the definition of “working class” was narrowed to identify groups with a high potential for collective action. As the scope of the independent variable was narrowed, the relationship more closely conformed to that predicted in the literature on class and politics. This suggests the wisdom of Kornhauser's admonition to analyze the social basis of voting “within a structure of explicit theory about class relations as dynamic functioning processes.”

The Rise of the Left and Working-Class Voting Behavior in New Zealand: New Methods

2005 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 523-555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miles Fairburn ◽  
Stephen Haslett
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
New Methods ◽  
Ecological Regression ◽  
Class Voting ◽  
Total Vote ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Party Voting

The extent to which mainstream left-wing parties attracted working-class votes during the first half of the twentieth century is exceptionally difficult to establish and explain. All of the various methods applied to the subject, including ecological regression of aggregate data, have had their problems, especially the ecological fallacy. A novel solution to these problems, in the context of New Zealand, takes occupational and party voting data at street level as its observations for ten towns from 1911 to 1951, and correlates the data treating each town for each year as a case. The working-class component in the total vote for the Labour Party varied surprisingly by town and followed unexpected trends.

Measurements of Backbench Attitudes by Guttman Scaling of Early Day Motions: A Pilot Study, Labour, 1968–69

1977 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 529-541 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Leece ◽  
Hugh Berrington
Keyword(s):  
Pilot Study ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
Political Behaviour ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Guttman Scaling ◽  
Changes Over Time ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Over Time

This research is addressed to the problem of constructing scales of political attitudes within the British House of Commons. Our aim, broadly, is to produce measures that will enable us to distinguish between backbenchers of the same party – for example, a Right-Left scale applied to the Labour party – and to relate these data to biographical variables and other measures of political behaviour. Moreover, by observing the relationship between Members' positions on different scales, and changes over time, we hope to learn more about the belief-systems of Members of Parliament.

scholarly journals Bolshevizing Communist Parties: The Algerian and South African Experiences

2003 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison Drew
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Working Class ◽  
South African ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Entire Population ◽  
Class Formation ◽  
Settler Societies ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Relationship

In 1924 and 1925 the Comintern introduced its policy of Bolshevization. A goal of Bolshevization was the creation of mass-based communist parties. In settler societies this meant that the local communist party should aim to be demographically representative of the entire population. This article traces the efforts of the communist parties in Algeria and South Africa to indigenize, seeking to explain why their efforts had such diverse outcomes. It examines four variables: the patterns of working-class formation; the socialist tradition of each country; the relationship between the Comintern and the two communist parties; and the level of repression against communists in both societies. The cumulative weight of the variables in the Algerian case helps to explain why communist activity in the 1920s – including the communist party's ability to indigenize – was far more difficult in Algeria than South Africa.

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