A study of the relationships between housing patterns, social class and political attitudes in three Auckland electorates

Abstract

There is a strain of social criticism, dating back to the fifties and sixties, which alleged that New Zealand was about to become a society more clearly divided by lines related to "class". New Zealand was presented as a society in which a natural egalitarianism of social habits and attitudes had flourished. The critical voices of this earlier period feared that as New Zealand's economy evolved further, so would the degree of social demarcation within society. They expected that these changes would show up most rapidly, and with deeper effects, in the northernmost part of New Zealand, particularly in Auckland. There the postwar period's industrial development and population growth was greatest. In the suburbs of the north, middle class beliefs and life styles would develop. Suburban life, in areas of new housing containing those who most notably benefited from these changes, would provide mutual reinforcements for the evolution of a much more consciously middle class way of life. Many of the implications of this social criticism are explored in this thesis by means of a questionnaire professionally administered to a sample of 312 respondents in three Auckland electorates. East Coast Bays was chosen as an example of a burgeoning middle class suburb, Te Atatu as a newer area of working class settlement, and Birkenhead as a bridge between the two of them, socially and politically. The survey was administered shortly before the 1978 general election. A variety of facts about, and attitudes to, housing, employment, life styles, suburban locations and indistrialisation are explored. These are normally related back to the basic dependent variables of voting choice, electorate, the propensity to think in class terms, and subjective class identification. The overwhelming pressure of the evidence is that of continuity with the egalitarian past. The chief hypothesis tested is that "following on the most rapid processes of postwar industrialisation in New Zealand, new suburban contexts have evolved in Auckland in which the middle class beneficiaries of Auckland's growth are reinforced in attitudes that reject egalitarianism, accept differential rewards and life styles, and are associated with distinctive political and social attitudes". On the evidence presented in this study it must be rejected.