[TimorLesteStudies] New article: Kelly Silva: Foho versus Dili: The political role of place in East Timor national imagination

[Bu Wilson]

Silva, K. 2011. Foho versus Dili: The political role of place in East Timor national imagination. REALIS – Revista de Estudos AntiUtilitaristas e PosColoniais, v. 1, n. 2 (2011) ISSN: 2179-7501
http://www.nucleodecidadania.org/revista/index.php/realis/article/view/28


AbstractThis article discusses aspects of the topogenic processes involved in the East Timor nation building. Foho (mountains) and Dili are so presented as particular places, devised as products of long-lasting government practices in Timor. Based on the controversies surrounding marriage prestations in the contemporary Dili, the representations projected onto the foho are explored. I argue that the mountains are characterized, among others things, as the loci of “usos e costumes” (customs), of sacred lands and objects, of origin houses, of customary law, and of the ancestors to whom most East Timor people are related and where a series of required rituals are performed to maintain the normal flow of life. As in many other territories that were colonized belatedly, we see in East Timor the urban/rural, town/hinterland oppositions at work which resulted from colonial bifurcate State. While placing such oppositions on a comparative perspective with Oceanic and South Eastern Asian countries, I also claim that they are the base for the politics of custom that have been re-emerged in the post-colonial East Timor.
 

 

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Dr Bu V.E. Wilson
T: Australia +61 0 407 087 086
E: buvewilson at gmail.com
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