 So, here we have a man looking at a wall in the blank white area and another man who by the way he was just washing his hands or rubbing his hands for some reason before he came into view now these two men are planning I think to write on this wall and here's my friend Rich. So suddenly my colleague Rich has appeared I can tell it's Rich even though we can only see his back he's fiddling about with his glasses and they're all preparing I think to draw or paint on a wall. I have no idea why. I think this might be where Rich does his research quite a lot of the time which is Chamba in India but they're really looking very carefully at this what looks like a huge sign that they're now even measuring and preparing to draw on but it's difficult to know what they're deliberating because they're all turned away from us and they're chatting about what they're going to do looking very serious this is obviously a very important task this thing with all the little details and measuring and I feel this is going to take a very long time they're not rushing they're taking those quite slowly oh my goodness okay this is a painter and I think he's painting me with green eyes which I like is that me in India it's it's just this crazy exuberant time with like election rallies people dancing music cars blaring with loudspeakers shouting slogans of the candidates the convoys of cars following the the candidates as they go to every single village to do a speech and it's just just this amazing sort of fascinating experience and I got right into that but I also got sort of bound up in it as well so things would happen like I was photographing an election rally it was one of the first rallies I'd photographed and I went to meet the the candidate a couple of days later and she asked if I would share some of the photos that I'd taken and I was very happy to do that and then two days later I start seeing some of those photos I had taken which were being used on campaign posters they were posted they were blown up to huge size and put on around the town there were there were stickers with this same picture on them and I was thinking that's my picture and I've you know I should have charged for this or if if you know that that helps them be elected you know am I to blame if I help them sort of create this image of themselves that they like so that was that was one of the slightly strange things it's really hard not to get sucked into these these whole processes because it is such a carnival before I'd done research on shepherds and I felt that I became much more of a shepherd than I ever did become a politician so I think politicians remain an alien tribe whereas tribal nomadic shepherds are much more familiar to me and I feel much more comfortable sometimes with them just hanging out with 400 sheep and goats on a hillside Fiji it's it's the way the world should be I think one of the one of the former popes said that about Fiji on a visit and it's a real tourist tagline right within Fiji it has been for decades politically it is so interesting because it's this microcosm of all the issues that as a political anthropologist and even as a person I'm interested in right about identity about terror the territory about sovereignty about access to rights and status and power and who belongs and I think actually all of my research has always been the nob of it has always been about who belongs and who gets to say who belongs and in what way and I think that stems very much from my experience growing up in like 1970s 80s London and seeing how that changed and and again over the years wondering am I am I a Londoner am I British but the the key challenge is not to not to bring your own biases to it and to try and understand where people are coming from so as I said Fiji's got a history of colonialism you know it's had this kind of manufactured multi-ethnic kind of condition imposed on it and it's that struggle between indigenous identity and immigrant identity but it's not immigrant in the way that I or others are in the west for example because that immigrant community in Fiji is a is a post indentured community so this is post slavery indenture and they have been living in Fiji for I think more than 120 years so there's a long lineage yeah so again that question of belonging at what point do you get to belong I'm a Londoner that's how I identify I have very little identity beyond being a Londoner and an immigrant working class woman Indian right academically I always feel like an interloper because I have this this triple whammy of being Indian immigrant second generation working class and a woman I shouldn't be here how did I get here even in practical ways if you want to go off and do do research you pay for something first and then you recover it in expenses so working class person I've not always had access to funds that allow me to do that I think it's it's a good point about being an Indian I'm seen as an English person I think that brings me a huge amount of privilege and access I can get into places and do things and ask questions that I wouldn't normally expect I could do and that was one of the big changes and one of the reasons I wanted to sort of study in my hometown and do research there was just to contrast that it's a mystery I don't know if they see me properly in a way I think I'm kind of invisible in my environment maybe not after this film but no what I mean I don't think much of them thought about doing research inside parliaments it's not something very common you know at least in Brazil and I think most countries I don't feel uncomfortable around them but I don't feel that I'm I'm part of that group I don't think I have the sort of the ability to to sort of stick to a fixed manifesto or set of beliefs you know and I I'm I think as an anthropologist I I tend to sort of listen to different points of view and see value in each of them I don't I don't sort of say okay that's me that's what I want to be I don't want to be in this club and all I'm going to do is is fight that corner and I I don't think I could do that I like moving between different clubs and listening to different positions and maybe finding common ground between them that that for me is more interesting I think I'd be really good as a spat I think I might you know a special advisor who is behind the scenes and is constantly trying to work out you know policy and and and and gossiping in a constructive way but with like you know between public government departments and I think that I think I'd be better at that power behind the throne or am I just letting myself off the hook it would be very frightening to to withstand the level of attacks that they do get especially on social media and your families get it as well so it would be yeah it would be hard and yeah it was so different 50 years ago 50 years ago sure you've got letters but now that onslaught of of really vile attacks is is is difficult to imagine no I've never thought of myself being a politician because I think I don't have the the qualities and the will of the vote in my life or something like that because I think it's a very hard job very very hard job I think they work a lot basically all the time they work a lot they are always thinking about their activity at least the ones I I know and I research and for women I think is it's even much more demanding in terms of the public exposure and the questions people ask you that they would never think of asking a man um no I don't really I don't want I've never thought about being a politician I remember there were three different MPs from three different political parties you know and there was you know posed for the camera and one of them photo bombed and I thought god that's so interesting that's not something that you're used to thinking or seeing when you think about politicians doing this really important political you know work that's so interesting and then I got a few a few little tidbits from from people about oh yes no these two MPs who go hammer and tong at each other in the chamber were actually you know discussing things about their children and their health and advice etc or just hanging out somebody once said to me no political party has anyone who agrees with more than about 40 percent of the policies but it's in a way it's depressing but in a way it's quite impressive those people are all managing to stay in coalition with each other even though they have a high level disagreement between each other because it's a team sport politics you know I really respect people who can stick with the team even though they really don't agree with quite a lot and they in a sense the way they see it is they're kind of repressing their individual whim is how they might describe it one person describes me so you know you're really trying to say no actually to make country work to make democracy work you have to just sort of you know go with the team and you pick the best leader you can and you're not necessarily going to agree with them but you can't just constantly undermine them because that's not how it's not going to work but I would find that difficult I'm quite rebellious I I find it very hard to sort of just go with a whole package dogmatic pattern you know pack an ideological ideological package I mean as guilty as everyone of distrusting the government here in the UK and politicians generally and I rail against you know things most of the time now unfortunately and so it's really difficult for me to think of them as humans there's so much emotion involved in living your own life within this political climate landscape with politicians trying to take away your rights and treating other people as less than human and you I don't know about but but I get so enraged and I think a lot of us do yeah in a way it's almost easier to be a bit more not dispassionate but a bit more distanced and find the human in the politician when it's someone else when it's over over there so I'd be really I mean I think it'd be great if Fiji and researchers try to study the UK parliament I'd love to know what they take away from that because I definitely think they'd open my eyes up to something I've not considered so maybe as a self described cynical realist I'm actually I have this kernel of hope and maybe that's what I just what I try to do as a researcher I try to find or think about finding the good it may not be abundant but it might just be there isn't that thrilling