Taking sociology to the suburbs

Press, 28 February 1981, Page 17

Taking sociology to the suburbs

Johnsonville; Continuity and Change in a New Zealand Township. By David Pearson. Allen and Unwin, 1980. 204 pp. $8.95 (Reviewed by Geoffrey Rice)

It is remarkable that this, the sixth in a scries of monographs in Australasian sociology, should be devoted to a single • community in New Zealand, and even more remarkable that so much of the book is history rather than sociology, or at least what some may prefer to. call historical sociology. Why Johnsonville, of all places? The only clue revealed in the introduction is that the author happened to live there between 1974 and 1976; is it possible that what began as yarning with the locals in the pub (correction; community tavern) somehow burgeoned into a full-scale sociological survey'? One suspects that the justifications • offered for the choice of subject are rationalisations after the event, but they are no less valid for that. Johnsonville is a good example of a North Island bush settlement which grew into a country town on a main road, but it has added interest because, of its absorption as an outer suburb of a capital city, and without claiming that Johnsonville is New Zealand society writ small, the author can fairly claim that it reflects a number of important regional and national social changes in the century since 1880. This is perhaps the best recent example of historical sociology on a New Zealand subject, not least because it faces squarely the sometimes fratricidal differences in approach to social change between sociology and history. As the author observes, the central problem is not that of methodology, which is ndw often very similar, but of presentation. If there is too much sociology, the jargon, theory and statistical overkill may render a book

virtually unreadable to all but professional sociologists. On the other hand, if there is too much factual description • or mere narrative, the academic sociologist is likely to discard it as. idiosyncratic, “non-generalisable,” and "unrelated to the wider discourses of sociological theory.’’ David Pearson has bravely attempted to steer between these extremes with a blend of description and theory at different levels within a comparative historical framework. After an opening narrative chapter entitled "Bush Clearing to Suburb" and a survey of "The Contemporary Scene." the core of the work comprises analytical chapters on property and inequality, local politics, and occupational changes. followed by theoretical chapters on the concepts of community and class (the latter appears as an article on "Small-Town Capitalism and Stratification" in the October. 1980, issue of the "N.Z. Journal of History ”). The variety of sources is impressive, but the array of statistics is often daunting: some sections flow well and make sense readily, but others are very heavy going indeed, especially where the table's are used to illustrate parts of the theory: the old metaphor about not seeing the wood for the trees springs readily to mind. Chapter Seven provides welcome relief, being largely a selection from interviews with older residents, describing in their own words how they feel about the changes they have seen in thenlifetime. The extracts are mostly short, and are always used to make a point, but their immediacy and vividness are most refreshing and lend a human dimension to the cold percentages of income levels and occupational categories. It. is. however, the only chapter after the first which is likely to appeal to the

general reader. Granted, this is a professional sociologist writing for an academic audience, or at least the textbook market. Y’et the book so often lapses into, much more enjoyable narrative, one begins to wonder how the academics will regard it, and just who the author is really addressing. The main emphisis is, after all, strongly sociological and statistical, yet there are many ingredients present which could have made a rather different kind of book, one which would have conveyed its conclusions to a much wider audience. One suspects that historical sociology can only be made to appeal to a general audience at the expense of its academic respectability. Yet good social history can and should be readable as well as respectable, as Stevan Eldred-Grigg’s "Southern Gentry" has recently demonstrated.’ If one’s researches are worth conveying to a wider audience, then thev should’ be presented in a really acceptable form, leaving the tables and statistics in one's thesis or learned articles. Readers of non-fiction increasingly demand more than mere words, and rightly expect illustrations to help convey a sense of location and atmosphere. Apart from an end-paper map of pre-European Wellington, Pearson’s "Johnsonville" is devoid of illustration. An historical geographer would at least have given us better maps. Perhaps the illustrated edition is yet to come, but if and when it does, the text will need a major overhaul. Historians have traditionally written for the general reader as well as themselves, which may partly explain why their subject survives against all odds; sociologists, may need reminding of the risks inherent in writing only for each other.