Tinkering: A short story about care and repair in the informal settlements of Fiji

Please join us for "Tinkering: A short story about care and repair in the informal settlements of Fiji" with speakers Associate Professor Tarryn Phillips (La Trobe University) and Dr Edward Narain. Associate Professor Debra McDougall (University of Melbourne) will act as discussant.

Ethnographic fiction is a creative medium through which to examine the tensions and overlaps between different narratives of “progress”.  Building on long term ethnographic research about healthcare and inequality in Fiji, Tarryn Phillips presents a short story called ‘Tinkering’ co-authored with her collaborator and husband, Edward Narain. Equally playful and poignant, this tale follows a day in the life of a taxi driver from Suva’s informal settlements as he seeks to wrangle an “upgrade” for his diabetic mother against the odds. The story is contextualised within Tarryn's current ARC project on the role of medical (mis) trust in shaping healthcare engagement across the Pacific (with Associate Professor John Taylor and a team of scholars in Fiji, Samoa and Vanuatu). The discussant will be Associate Professor Debra McDougall, whose work offers vital insights on the intersection of race and inequality in the Pacific.

Associate Professor Tarryn Phillips is a medical anthropologist and socio-legal studies scholar in the Department of Social Inquiry at La Trobe University. Dr Edward Narain is a Fijian economist, writer and political analyst whose work regularly appears in the Fiji Sun and Fiji Times. Tarryn and Edward’s widely acclaimed ethnographic novel, Sugar, was published internationally through University of Toronto Press in 2024.