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Erik Newland Olssen (born 14 December 1941) is a New Zealand historian whose research focuses on the linkages between social structures, politics, and the world of ideas at four spatial domainsthe local, provincial, national and global. His early research examined labour history, especially the working-class mobilisation in New Zealand from 1880 to 1940 and included a study of Caversham, regarded as one of the most industrialised areas of New Zealand at that time. He has published several articles and monographs, including a biography of John A. Lee, and a history of Otago. Olssen was an academic in the Department of History at the University of Otago from 1969 until his retirement in 2002, when he was conferred with the title of emeritus professor.
In 1969, Olssen was recruited to the University of Otago as a lecturer by the head of history, Angus Ross. He was promoted to associate professor in 1978, and to a personal chair in 1984. He was head of the Department of History from 1989 to 1993 and 2000 to 2002. On his retirement in 2002 he was appointed emeritus professor.
His work on John A. Lee as the subject of his thesis, showed Olssen there was little historiography related to the development of socialism in New Zealand at the time, and at Cornell in 1967 Olssen studied the new social history through the lens of "economics, statistics, game theory, and sociology", and has credited this time as being influential in his development as a social historian able to write the history of ordinary people. On his return to New Zealand, much of Olssen's research explored the development of social structures in the country from the early nineteenth century until 1940, specifically examining how "politics, society, ideas, culture, and economics affected the lives of individuals and their societies". This focus on social history that explored class and social relationships, was said by historian Jock Phillips to be an area pioneered by Olssen. According to Tony Ballantyne and Brian Moloughney from the University of Otago, Olssen's work significantly shaped understandings of "New Zealand's political traditions, intellectual culture and social formations".
Towards a History of the European Family in New Zealand co-authored by Olssen in 1978, was seen by two New Zealand historians Bronwyn Labrum and Bronwyn Dalley as being influential in shifting the historiography of New Zealand toward more of a "social historical approach". In acknowledging that comment, Olssen explained that the article had resulted from him coming into contact with feminism because research by his co-author Andrée Lévesque into women's history had uncovered much that was unrecognised. He said it was timely to draw on work he had done in the U.S. to write about the impact of the family historically in New Zealand. In 1978, when Olssen wrote an essay in The Gendered Kiwi , one writer stated that it indicated a shift in position by Olssen toward recognising the need for further research into the family as a primary site where gender is constructed.
In 2008 the New Zealand media published a claim by John Stenhouse, an associate professor at the University of Otago that the country's history was being distorted by "secular and left-liberal" historians, such as Olssen and Keith Sinclair to push their own agendas. Olssen called the claim "either unfair or disingenuous or both" but noted that he had often discussed whether New Zealand was a Christian country with the associate professor and there was some agreement that Christianity had influenced in shaping the values of New Zealand. In an earlier piece Stenhouse had critiqued New Zealand historiography and religion and developed a "secularization thesis", citing as an example Olssen's position that Edward Gibbon Wakefield's social experiment in New Zealand "left little room for religion". In the same article, Stenhouse contended that Olssen's work with Andrée Lévesque in 1978 on the development of the European family in New Zealand, reflected "second wave feminist antipathy toward patriarchy" when they portrayed the churches and clergy in Otago as providing justification for the patriarchal values in the family, community and wider New Zealand society.
The Power of the Shop Culture: The Labour Process in the New Zealand Railway Workshops 1890–1930 (1992). Written by Olssen and Jeremy Brecher, this article reflected their research into the building and engineering trades and challenged the idea that large-scale industry inevitably reduced skilled workers' agency, showing that those employed at Hillside Engineering enjoyed and maintained almost complete control over the labour process, and "their skill...gave them a sense of identity and pride".
Building the New World: work, politics and society in Caversham, 1880s–1920s (1995). This publication was authored by Olssen following the project receiving considerable funding from the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology. One reviewer saw it as representing a change in focus for Olssen from unskilled to skilled workers at a local rather than a national level. Raewyn Dalziel of The University of Auckland held that Olssen's acquaintance with "feminist and post-modern theory" positioned him to analyse the role of women in "work, politics and society", acknowledging he used reliable sources that showed data for most women were excluded if they did not work for wages. Questions did remain for the writer about whether some of the strong statements made by Olssen about perceptions of women at the time added value to the study, with the suggestion that at the very least the evidence needed to be reconsidered to ascertain if exclusions could "point to inclusions and alternative meanings". Len Richardson, a labour and sports historian at the University of Canterbury, suggested that Olssen's study was significant because it traced the process by which the women of the Caversham community were enabled to gain skilled training and more independence in their lives.
Sites of Gender: Women, Men & Modernity in Southern Dunedin, 1890–1939 (2003). Olssen assembling a larger multidisciplinary team in the late 1990s to analyse women's experience and the role of gender in structuring society, resulting in the publication of this book. Olssen took the position that the mobilisation of the workforce in the 1880s had many egalitarian aspects including the formation of some of the first women's unions, and women became increasingly confident and independent. Patricia Grimshaw of the University of Melbourne said the editors of the book had placed gender at the centre of an analysis of work in Caversham, and Olssen's contribution was a meta narrative that stressed the "change and continuities of gendering in work."
Class, Gender and the Vote (2005). This book was the result of a collaboration between some members of the team and a group of academics at the University of Canterbury headed by Professor Miles Fairburn. Olssen co-edited the book and contributed the chapter Marriage Patterns in Dunedin's Southern Suburbs, 1881–1938 which continued to explore the decisions young women made around work and marriage, which Olssen said, were influenced by higher levels of education and more awareness of debates and movements in the wider world related to women's rights.
Class and Occupation: The New Zealand Reality (2005). A reviewer said while the book was well-researched and very detailed, it was more likely to be of interest to specialists in the field of "demographics and census data...than...the general reader".
An Accidental Utopia? Social Mobility and the Foundations of an Egalitarian Society, 1880–1940 (2010). Olssen co-authored this as the fourth book published by the Caversham Project. Writing in the Otago Daily Times Geoffrey Vine, a journalist and Presbyterian minister, noted Olssen's radicalism and "socialist aspirations" and suggested it remained open to debate whether or not the book answered the question in its title.
Movement and Persistence: A Case Study of Southern Dunedin in Global Context (2011). This was a paper submitted by Olssen to Building Attachment in Families (2011), a funded project managed by the Centre for Research, Evaluation and Social Assessment (CRESA), with the goal of identifying how communities are built and sustained to create family wellbeing and manage problems of transience. Olssen used data confirming that within the suburb there were high levels of fluidity and social mixing of the population.
Working Lives c.1900 A Photographic Essay was launched in August 2014 by Dave Cull a former mayor of Dunedin. One reviewer said that while Olssen invited the reader "to engage with both the richness and limitations of the photographers' gaze", a lack of images related to "household work or child-raising; work-place injuries and ill-health", portrayed a narrow definition of work. When interviewed about Working Lives Olssen said that in the 1870s and 80s "the values and habits of life that evolved among the working men and women" in Dunedin were also reflected nationally. In Landfall magazine freelance writer, reviewer, artist, and musician James Dignan agreed with this position. Revisiting the history of organized labour in Dunedin in the book, Olssen, suggested that the formation of the first women's union and the general acceptance by middle-class people for unions, resulted in workers actively supporting the development of an independent Labour Party.
Olssen received the Te Rangi Hiroa Medal in 2001.
Olssen's publication Building the New World: work, politics and society in Caversham, 1880s–1920s, won the J.E. Sherrard Prize, 1996.
In 1978 Olssen's book John A. Lee was placed 2nd in the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards.
The Erik Olssen Prize named in recognition of Olssen's work as a historian, is awarded biennially by The New Zealand Historical Association for the best first book by an author on any aspect of New Zealand History.
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