Land and life in Timor-Leste ethnographic essays

Includes bibliographical references.

Land and Life in Timor-Leste: Introduction / Andrew McWilliam and Elizabeth G. Traube -- Origins, Precedence and Social Order in the Domain of Ina Ama Beli Darlari / Susana Barnes -- Opening and Closing the Land: Land and power in the Idaté highlands / Judith Bovensiepen -- Fataluku Living Landscapes / Andrew McWilliam -- Darlau: Origins and their significance for Atsabe Kemak identity / Andrea K. Molnar -- Planting the Flag / Elizabeth G. Traube -- Water Relations: Customary systems and the management of Baucau City's water / Lisa Palmer -- Finding Bunaq: The homeland and expansion of the Bunaq in central Timor / Antoinette Schapper -- Tensions of Tradition: Making and remaking claims to land in the Oecusse enclave / Laura S. Meitzner Yoder -- Struggling Geographies: Rethinking livelihood and locality in Timor-Leste / Sandra Pannell -- The Articulation of Tradition in Timor-Leste / James J. Fox.

"This volume brings together a collection of papers from a diverse field of international scholars exploring the multiple ways that East Timorese communities are making and remaking their connections to land and places of ancestral significance. The work is explicitly comparative and highlights the different ways Timorese language communities negotiate access and transactions in land, disputes and inheritance especially in areas subject to historical displacement and resettlement. Consideration is extended to the role of ritual performance and social alliance for inscribing connection and entitlement. Emerging through analysis is an appreciation of how relations to land, articulated in origin discourses, are implicated in the construction of national culture and differential contributions to the struggle for independence."--Publisher's description.