[TimorLesteStudies] Water Politics and Spiritual Ecology: Custom, Environmental Governance and Development

[Michael Leach]

From: Lisa Rebecca Palmer [lrpalmer at unimelb.edu.au]

New book:

Water Politics and Spiritual Ecology: Custom, Environmental Governance and Development  (Routledge 2015)

by Lisa Palmer, University of Melbourne, Australia (email: lrpalmer at unimelb.edu.au<mailto:lrpalmer at unimelb.edu.au>)


The culmination of a decade of ethnographic research in Timor Leste, this book addresses a critical need for a sustained geographical and anthropological inquiry into the social issues of water governance. Exploring the ritual ecological practices, contexts and scales through which use, negotiation over and sharing of water occurs at the local level, this book shows the complex functioning and social, cultural, economic and environmental interdependencies of hydrological societies in the eastern region of Timor Leste. It examines the difficulties local communities face in having their rights recognised and their efforts to maintain and assert control of their waterscapes in the face of rapidly changing water governance institutions.

"This superb study of water, kinship, affinity, ritual, and narrative seamlessly brings together Timor Leste’s past and present and provides an original perspective on this post-colonial nation-state. It is indispensable reading for scholars and policy-makers concerned with the problematic relationship between local communities and national policies." –David Hicks, Professor of Anthropology at Stony Brook University, U.S.A., and Life member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, U.K.
"With great clarity and style, Palmer uncovers an unsuspected universe of intricate connections between society and nature created by the flow of water on the island of Timor. Like all great ethnographies, this book is a revelation."– J. Stephen Lansing, Asian School of the Environment, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
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