Sorry, Mr Cameron, they don't hug hoodies in New Zealand. But the burly beast's far-flung antipodean cousin, the bogan, looks set for an unexpectedly warm academic embrace with the news that a PhD student has been awarded £35,000 of public funds to prepare a thesis on the life and times of one of the region's more notorious subcultures.
Dave Snell received his controversial award through a local government scheme known as the top achiever doctoral scholarship, to complete a doctorate entitled The Everyday Life of Bogans: Identity and Community Among Heavy Metal Fans, in which he aims to find out what makes bogans tick.
According to the Urban Dictionary, the bogan is indeed "a fascinating beast".
He - and primarily it is a he - is:
... hideously repugnant and unintelligent, and yet [manages] to breed in ever-increasing numbers ... It is quite common to find five or six offspring in each family group, often with a different father for each new baby. Their habitat consists of a weatherboard or brick-veneer dwelling and is characterised by an early-model Holden or Ford in the driveway surrounded by a group of males discussing why the carby is stuffed and the results of last night's footy (a primitive gladiator-like spectator sport enjoyed by most bogans).
And the female of the species:
...while smaller in stature, is far more loud and aggressive than the male. While the males tend to be very friendly and congregate with other males, the females spend most of their time in supermarkets and shopping malls, using a shrill high-pitched call to discipline their children and contact other females.
For this reason, perhaps, male and female bogans only
rarely interact socially except during breeding season, which is otherwise known as Friday night.
Not everyone in New Zealand has welcomed the news of the bogans going under the scholarly microscope. The local Waikato Times quotes a conservative opposition MP, Paul Hutchinson, asking - not unreasonably - how such research will improve the small nation's global competitiveness.
Heaven help those who believe "this sort of research will underpin the New Zealand economy", he warned.
Added blogger David Farrar, the author of the country's popular Kiwiblog:
I was all in favour of the grant, until I realised it was not for a study into how to eradicate bogans, but to help us NZers understand our bogan community better.
At least one local paper begged to differ. In an editorial, the Herald On Sunday asked:
What if Archimedes had taken a shower? The famous scientist of Syracuse leapt out of the bath and ran naked through the streets shouting 'Eureka!' after suddenly realising that the volume of an irregular object was the same as the volume of water displaced when the object was submerged in water. The point is this: researchers, naked or fully dressed, often don't know what they are looking for until they've found it. So cut some slack to Waikato University student Dave Snell.
Oh, and don't forget to hug a hoodie while you're at it.
