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- Convenors:
-
Lisa Palmer
(University of Melbourne)
Kelly Silva (Universidade de Brasília)
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- Discussant:
-
Sara Niner
(Monash University)
- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- Ligertwood 112
- Sessions:
- Thursday 14 December, -, -
Time zone: Australia/Adelaide
Short Abstract:
This panel aims to bring together analyses about the ways statecraft in Timor-Leste entails an ambiguous and parasitical interplay among local, national and global institutions and the ideological, political, economic and administrative effects of these interactions.
Long Abstract:
This panel aims to bring together analyses about the ways statecraft in Timor-Leste entails an ambiguous and parasitical interplay among local, national and global institutions and the ideological, political, economic and administrative effects of these interactions. Among certain government areas, governance and modernization effects have been produced by the acknowledgment and internalization of local institutions in national governance. For other government and international agencies, customary practices are considered fundamental obstacles for social change. From local perspectives, the presence of state institutions and national and international projects may be weakening or enhancing customary dynamics of power and social reproduction. The intention of this panel is to explore these contingent and generative capacities and effects.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 13 December, 2017, -Paper short abstract:
The ways Timor-Leste state has dealt with elements of local governance complexes - called kultura - is the concern of this paper. Based on a literature review, I argue that state building in Timor-Leste entails recognition and parasitical uses of kultura.
Paper long abstract:
The ways Timor-Leste state has dealt with elements of local governance complexes - called kultura - is the main concern of this paper. Based on a literature review about the organizational dynamics of local power, I argue that state building in Timor-Leste entails recognition and parasitical uses of kultura and has turned it into means for pacifying, integrating and monopolizing power. At the same time, kultura is used to transpose and internalize modern practices and projects of social organization and subjectivation. The criticism leveled at the politicization of local elections is considered an expression of agency and resistance on the part of sectors of the rural populations to projects entailing the political co-optation of their social reproduction dynamics by the Dili-based national elites.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the extent to which Timor's independence trajectory has included the active involvement of self-identifying indigenous Timorese traditions, practices and priorities in the governance of the new nation. We argue that indigeneity is an inherently ambivalent concept in Timor-Leste.
Paper long abstract:
Successfully achieving nationhood under the banner of what Anderson (2003) terms, 'aggregated nativeness', Timor-Leste is South-East Asia's newest nation. Yet as Anderson observes, 'for the culture of nationalism…survival cannot be enough' (2003: 184) and as with all other nationalisms, Timor-Leste's nation-making agenda is now fully engaged in the search for inclusive futures for its citizens. In this paper we examine the extent to which Timor's independence trajectory has included the active involvement of self-identifying indigenous Timorese traditions, practices and priorities in the governance of the new nation. By theorizing the shifting nature of Timorese 'indigenous' ontologies, we argue that indigeneity is an inherently ambivalent concept in Timor-Leste, both as a founding principle and a lived reality sidelined in the pursuit of more cosmopolitan and technocratic futures. We argue that the term 'indigenous' can be used interchangeably with that of the 'customary' in Timor Leste, but it is not (yet) a term mobilised as a vehicle for the politics of recognition at either national or local levels of civil society.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the governance of dead bodies in Timor-Leste. It shows that what counts as a 'proper' form of honouring those who died during the Indonesian occupation is increasingly determined through complex negotiations between customary and familial requirements and state demands.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the governance of dead bodies in independent Timor-Leste. Specifically, it examines how the state is constructing, and exerting ownership of, 'martyrs' by establishing district-based heroes' cemeteries and ossuaries and organising state-sponsored reburial rituals. What counts as a 'proper' form of honouring those who died during the Indonesian occupation is increasingly determined through complex negotiations between customary and familial requirements and state demands. I argue that the outcomes of these negotiations around East Timorese mortuary rituals establish boundaries around national 'belonging' and are part of the process of defining the scope and power of a new state. The ownership of the dead is a lens through which to view peoples' everyday encounters with, and responses to, performances of state legitimacy.
Paper short abstract:
Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Timorese village, the paper suggests that forms of justice usually taken as "customary" are, in some ways, locally perceived as part of the state system, challenging national policies towards the acknowledgment of local forms of conflict resolution.
Paper long abstract:
The paper explores the relation between the formal justice system and local forms of conflict resolution from the perspective of the locals of an East Timorese village. We argue that forms of justice taken, from the perspective of the state, as "traditional" or "customary" are locally perceived as part of the state system. Local authorities, such as the suku chief, play an important role in mobilizing signs of statecraft, transferring at the same time the legitimacy of local forms of mediation to the state and reinforcing state structures into the village level. However, the frontiers between "culture" and "state" are yet an issue to the ongoing reform of the judicial and legal system, which deals with different perspectives on how to cope with this two imagetic discourse fields in the building of a national justice system.