Most people beyond New Zealand don’t know that Christchurch’s famed rugby team is named the Crusaders and carries the symbols of crusading armies, including swords and armours. To this day, the team’s website proudly describes these regalia.

The academy is seemingly obsessed with the working class, but at the same time deeply disconnected from it. While most academics are happy to discuss the poor in theory, few are comfortable when confronted by the everyday drudgery of working-class life, and even fewer have direct experience of monotonous, often backbreaking labour. Of course, many young people and students have to depend on minimum-wage unskilled jobs at points in their lives, but for most this is just a transitory stage.