In this episode Familiar Stranger Emma Quilty sat down with Associate Professor Oneka LaBennett to talk about her most recent book, Global Guyana: Shaping Race, Gender, and Environment in the Caribbean and Beyond

In this episode Familiar Stranger sat down with Fijian author and political analyst Edward Narain and Associate Professor Tarryn Philips from La Trobe University. Together Edward and Tarryn published Sugar: An Ethnographic Novel which reveals the extent to which the lives, health, and opportunities of Fijians are still dramatically affected by the country’s colonial past and entrenched inequality. Set in Suva, with a tropical cyclone looming, Sugar follows three strangers from different cultural backgrounds as they find themselves entwined in a brutal murder: revealing inconvenient truths about the darker side of global development in Fiji. The story follows a naïve but well-intentioned Australian health volunteer, a jaded Indo-Fijian amateur historian, and a troubled Fijian (iTaukei) teen caring for his diabetic grandmother. The reader is immersed in each character’s world and slowly comes to understand the historical and structural reasons behind Fiji’s diabetes epidemic, exploitative labour and trade practices, and the role Australia and other nations play in both. Head over to our website for a full list of Links and Citations!

Producer’s note: Hi everyone, Executive Producer Matt here, just wanted to slide in here quickly and say that we recorded this panel a while ago, so you might hear some familiar voices! Just wanted to say a quick thank you to Irina, Andrew, Ruonan and Alex for all their effort in recording this panel! We hope you like it. We’ve gone digging and we struck some gold! We recorded this panel a little while ago at the Centre for the Public Awareness of Science’s podcast studio with some of the PhD candidates based at the ANU. In this panel, Familiar Stranger Ruonan opens the floor up to familiar Stranger Alex to talk about some of the differences he noticed around when it comes to “bushwalking”/hiking versus, you know, walking. The Strangers dive into the differences between the two and the interesting societal structures which determines if you’re a hiker or a walker. Familiar Stranger Irina then poses a question around identity as individuals as well as anthropologists. It launches the Strangers into pensive thoughts around who they are, the communities they are interacting with and what makes us, us and them, them. There were some really interesting topics broached on this panel and we hope you enjoy!