Paper short abstract:

An ethnographic analysis of the relations between particular spaces and the emotions attached to them through individual and collective rituals among a Bunak speaking community in Bobonaro mountains, East Timor.

Paper long abstract:

I opi op mil is a collective noun used to describe the community, when depicted by their members in public context. The phrase reveals a geographical fact as this is a mountain village. It also reflects sociopolitical, religious and ritual reality: opi op is the altar located in the center of the village sacred plaza, representing the nearby mountains which are considered the place of origin of the world. This place is an essential "ritual attractor" (Fox, 1993), for both individual life-cycle and collective rituals that occur during the year. It cannot though be seen as an isolated ritual space but as a part of the path that links the living and the collective ancestors with each person's sacred house in time and space. It also divides the home domain and the mountains (in fact a world vision that locates persons and political-emotional obligations along the island of Timor and the world).

This presentation will discuss the ways which this place produces and reproduces by ritual as a metaphor of relations between the living and the other beings (Friedberg, 2009), but also as a powerful emotional and political argument for claiming possession of places and memories. The presentation is connected with the ethnographic research done for PhD in August 2003, 2004 and August 2005- August 2006, in a Bunak village in the mountains of Bobonaro, East Timor.