[TimorLesteStudies] Euroseas Conference Panel on Timor-Leste Call for Papers

[Jennifer Drysdale]

 From Frederic Durand; Enquiries email durand at univ-tlse2.fr

Call for papers to Panel on "Timor Leste: How to 
Build a New Nation in Southeast Asia in the 21th Century?"
EUROSEAS Conference, September 12-15, 2007, Naples, Italy.

Convenors:
Christine Cabasset-Semedo (christine.cabasset at free.fr)
Frederic Durand, Department of geography, 
Toulouse II-University (durand at univ-tlse2.fr)

At the crossroads of Asia and the Pacific, 
East-Timor has a very special place in Southeast 
Asia and presents many contrasts, or even 
paradoxes. Although not a vast country (a little 
bigger than Lebanon), East-Timor shows a high 
level of diversity with regards to culture (20 
ethnolinguistic groups) as well as to geography. 
Qualified of "poorest country of Asia", it has 
important agricultural and mineral resources. 
"New" country rebuilt by the UN after twenty-five 
years of Indonesian military occupation, it 
shares more than four centuries of history with 
Portugal. Presented like a success story of UN 
administration in 2002, the country underwent 
since then several crisis that question this success.
These particularities call analyses in all the 
fields of research from anthropology to economy, 
history and politics, in order to understand the 
parameters that explain the difficulties for the 
first nation of the third millennium to elaborate 
a real project of society and to find its place 
in Southeast Asia: tradition versus modernity; 
economical and political institutions; 
interactions between the components of the 
society (religion, political parties, traditional 
leaders
); role of charismatic personalities, 
national unity and cultural diversity; official 
languages; reconciliation process; relations with 
Indonesia, Australia and other countries of the region

Established researchers as well as young 
scholars, from all the fields of social sciences, 
are welcomed to participate in this panel.