[TimorLesteStudies] New Book: Haunted Houses and Ghostly Encounters: Ethnography and Animism in East Timor (NUS Press)

[Michael Leach]

Christopher J. Shepherd. 2019. Haunted Houses and Ghostly Encounters: Ethnography and Animism in East Timor, 1860-1975. Singapore: NUS Press, 352pp.


Haunted Houses and Ghostly Encounters presents a history of Western ethnography of animism in East Timor during the Portuguese period. The book consists of ten chapters, each one a narrative of the work and experience of a particular ethnographer. Part One deals with colonial ethnography and Part Two with professional anthropology. Covering a selection of seminal 19th- and 20th-century ethnographies, the author explores the relationship between spiritual beliefs, colonial administration, ethnographic interests and fieldwork experience. It is argued that the presence of outsiders precipitated a new “transformative animism” as colonial control over Portuguese Timor was consolidated. This came about because increasingly powerful outsiders posed threats and offered rewards to the Timorese just as the powerful ancestor spirits had long done; consequently, the Timorese ritualised their dealings with outsiders following their established model for appealing to spirits. Bringing colonial and professional ethnography into the one frame of reference, it is shown that ethnographers of both types not only bore witness to these processes of transformative animism, they also exemplified them. The book presents an original synthesis of East Timor’s history, culture and anthropology.


https://nuspress.nus.edu.sg/collections/frontpage/products/haunted-houses-and-ghostly-encounters-ethnography-and-animism-in-east-timor-1860-1975<https://nuspress.nus.edu.sg/collections/frontpage/products/haunted-houses-and-ghostly-encounters-ethnography-and-animism-in-east-timor-1860-1975>




Professor Michael Leach
Politics and International Relations
Faculty of Health, Arts and Design
Swinburne University of Technology
H98, PO Box 218 Hawthorn VIC
AUSTRALIA 3122
Phone: +61 3 9214 5357

<http://www.swinburne.edu.au/health-arts-design/staff-profiles/view.php?who=mleach>
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