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Land and Life in Timor-Leste Ethnographic Essays

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Land and Life in Timor-Leste Ethnographic Essays Land and Life in Timor-Leste Ethnographic Essays Land and Life in Timor-Leste Ethnographic Essays Edited by Andrew McWilliam and Elizabeth G. Traube THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY E PRESS E PRESS Published by ANU E Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at http://epress.anu.edu.au/ National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Title: Land and life in Timor-Leste : ethnographic essays / Andrew McWilliam and Elizabeth G. Traube, editors. ISBN: 9781921862595 (pbk.) 9781921862601 (ebook) Notes: Includes bibliographical references. Subjects: Ethnology--Timor-Leste. Timor-Leste--Social life and customs--21st century. Timor-Leste--Social conditions--21st century. Timor-Leste--Rural conditions--21st century. Other Authors/Contributors: McWilliam, Andrew. Traube, Elizabeth G. Dewey Number: 301.295986 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover design and layout by ANU E Press Cover image: ‘Uma Lulik Borolaisoba, Watulari, Viqueque’ by Josh Trindade. Printed by Griffin Press This edition © 2011 ANU E Press Contents Contributors . .vii Map . x 1 . Land and Life in Timor-Leste: Introduction . 1 Andrew McWilliam and Elizabeth G. Traube 2 . Origins, Precedence and Social Order in the Domain of Ina Ama Beli Darlari . 23 Susana Barnes 3 . Opening and Closing the Land: Land and power in the Idaté highlands . 47 Judith Bovensiepen 4 . Fataluku Living Landscapes . 61 Andrew McWilliam 5. Darlau: Origins and their significance for Atsabe Kemak identity . 87 Andrea K. Molnar 6 . Planting the Flag . 117 Elizabeth G. Traube 7 . Water Relations: Customary systems and the management of Baucau City’s water . 141 Lisa Palmer 8 . Finding Bunaq: The homeland and expansion of the Bunaq in central Timor . 163 Antoinette Schapper 9 . Tensions of Tradition: Making and remaking claims to land in the Oecusse enclave . 187 Laura S. Meitzner Yoder 10 . Struggling Geographies: Rethinking livelihood and locality in Timor-Leste . 217 Sandra Pannell 11. The Articulation of Tradition in Timor-Leste . 241 James J. Fox Index . 259 v Contributors Susana Barnes Susana Barnes is a PhD candidate in anthropology at Monash University. Previously, she undertook fieldwork as part of an ANU interdisciplinary anthropological–legal study of customary land-tenure systems in Timor-Leste. Her research interests are East Timorese ethnography, customary land and resource tenures, ritual and religion, social transformation and state and society. Email: <[email protected]> Judith Bovensiepen Judith Bovensiepen is a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Kent in Canterbury (UK). Her research interests include place, landscape and displacement, kinship and exchange, as well as religious transformations and anthropological approaches to history and social change. Email: <[email protected]> James J . Fox James J. Fox is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at The Australian National University. His current affiliation is with the Resource Management in the Asia Pacific Program. He did his first fieldwork on Timor in 1965-66 and has continued to do research in both East and West Timor on a wide range of topics. His most recent field trip to Timor-Leste was in April 2011. Email: <[email protected]> Andrew McWilliam Andrew McWilliam is a Senior Fellow in Anthropology at The Australian National University. He has published widely on the ethnography of Timor and has continuing research interests in Timor-Leste and eastern Indonesia. Recent work has focused on issues of governance, community economies and ritual exchange, customary resource tenures and plantation histories. Email: <andrew. [email protected]> vii Land and Life in Timor-Leste: Ethnographic essays Laura Meitzner Yoder Laura Meitzner Yoder is Associate Professor in the graduate and undergraduate programs at Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center of Goshen College, Indiana, USA. Her work centres on environmental history and political ecology. Email: <[email protected]> Andrea Katalin Molnar Andrea Katalin Molnar is Professor of Anthropology and Faculty Associate of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University (USA). She is the author of Timor-Leste: Politics, history, and culture (2010), and is the current Executive Editor (SEA) for the journal Asian Affairs: An American Review. Her research and teaching interests include Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Southern Thailand, political anthropology, social structure, development, gender and language, conflict and peace, anthropology of religion, Islam, and religions of South-East Asia. Email: <[email protected]> Lisa Palmer Lisa Palmer is a senior lecturer in the School of Resource Management and Geography at the University of Melbourne where she teaches and researches in the fields of indigenous and local peoples’ natural and cultural resource management. Since 2006 she has conducted fieldwork in Timor-Leste. She is currently chief investigator on an Australian Research Council research project in Timor-Leste entitled ‘Reconnecting with Water: Lessons from a diverse economy’. Email: <[email protected]> Sandra Pannell Sandra Pannell has a doctorate in anthropology from the University of Adelaide and works as a consultant anthropologist in native title and cultural heritage research. She has held positions at the University of Adelaide, James Cook University, The Australian National University, and the Rainforest Cooperative Research Centre in Cairns. She is the author of two books, one on World Heritage and the other on Indigenous environmental histories. She is editor of a book on violence, society and the state in Indonesia and co-editor of volumes on resource management in eastern Indonesia and Indigenous planning in northern Australia. Email: <[email protected]> viii Contributors Antoinette Schapper Antoinette Schapper is based at the University of Leiden and works on Papuan and Austronesian languages on Timor and Alor. Her research focuses on grammatical description and understanding of the (pre-)history of languages in eastern Indonesia. Currently, she is writing a grammar of the central Alorese language Kamang and investigating spatial patterns of several Alorese languages. Email: <[email protected]> Elizabeth G . Traube Elizabeth G. Traube is Professor of Anthropology at Wesleyan University (USA). She has longstanding research interests in Timor-Leste and is the author of Cosmology and Social Life: Ritual exchange among the Mambai of East Timor (1986). Recent publications have focused on contemporary perspectives of the legacy of resistance and the independence struggle. Email: <etraube@ wesleyan.edu> ix Ethno-linguistic map of Timor The Australian National University, Carto-GIS x 1. Land and Life in Timor-Leste: Introduction Andrew McWilliam and Elizabeth G. Traube Post Occupation In the aftermath of the Indonesian occupation (1975–99) and the bittersweet triumph of the resistance struggle, Timor-Leste emerged as the first new nation of the twenty-first century.1 The path to independence, however, was a rocky one and left a deep legacy of suffering and social dislocation. In the chaotic withdrawal of Indonesian forces, a final bout of violence, property destruction and population displacement left the half-island nation a smoking ruin under the protection of a multinational peacekeeping force: the International Force for East Timor (Interfet). Ten years on, the process of rebuilding continues. A constitutional democratic system of parliamentary government has been established, oil and gas revenues now provide sustainable funds for much needed infrastructure, and government services are gradually being reinstated to support economic livelihoods for a growing population. Social life in the villages and scattered settlements is once again focused on the seasonal rhythm of agriculture and the rituals of exchange that mark life-cycle ceremonies and the conduct of rural sociality. Still, the path to a peaceful prosperity has not been without setbacks—most dramatically exemplified in the round of inter-communal violence and property destruction that erupted in the capital, Dili, during 2006. The intense period of civil disorder was fuelled by a powerful mix of ethnicised political and economic rivalries, corrosive youth unemployment and tensions over housing. If independence was built on the unity of struggle and shared suffering, the post-independence landscape is a more fragmented mosaic of crosscutting positions, competing claims and aspirations. In the wake of these events and the opportunities afforded an open political environment for the first time in a generation, Timor-Leste has attracted the attention of a new wave of social-science researchers. Most are drawn to the island with a shared interest in exploring and documenting the aftermath of occupation and the diverse challenges of renewed nation building. The result is a growing body of anthropological research and analysis that charts the shifting 1 The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste (RDTL) was officially declared (restored) on 20 May 2002. 1 Land and Life in Timor-Leste: Ethnographic essays fortunes of Timor-Leste society through the micro-politics of local communities adapting to changing circumstances (see Gunn 2007 for a preliminary
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