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Se mak autor dokumentu is Lisa Palmer
 
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‘Opening the paths to healing’: Developing an integrated approach to health in Timor Leste Palmer, L., Barnes, S. and Kakuma, R. 2017. ‘Opening the paths to healing’: Developing an integrated approach to health in Timor Leste. 'Third World Thematics', Special Issue: 'What Witchcraft is this?' Global Encounters Between Development, Magic and Spiritual Ontologies, 2( 2–3): 248–262. In Timor Leste, customary healing practices are deeply embedded in the inter-relationships between people, the ancestors and the environment. Meanwhile being ‘modern’ has long meant being both educated and Christian, ushering in ongoing shifts in moral worlds. These seemingly contradictory forms of sociality, relationality and subjectivity are, we argue, uniquely woven together through a deeply political meshwork of performative practices. Drawing on the experience of our collaborative research into mental health systems in Timor-Leste, we ask what this means for attempts to engage with diverse approaches to healing through an integrated approach to the nation’s public health programmes and policies. 12-Jun-2017
Ambivalent 'Indigeneities' in an independent Timor-Leste: Between the customary and national governance of resources Palmer, L. and McWilliam A. 2018. Ambivalent 'Indigeneities' in an independent Timor-Leste: Between the customary and national governance of resources. 'Asia Pacific Viewpoint'. 59(3): 265-275. Successfully achieving nationhood under the banner of what Anderson (2003) terms ‘aggregated nativeness’, Timor‐Leste is southeast Asia's newest nation. Yet as Anderson asserts ‘for the culture of nationalism … survival cannot be enough’ (2003: 184) and as with all other nationalisms, Timor‐Leste's nation‐making agenda is now engaged in the search for inclusive futures for its citizens. In this paper, we examine the extent to which Timor‐Leste's independence trajectory has included the active involvement of Indigenous Timorese traditions, practices and priorities in the governance of the new nation. By theorising these shifting ‘Indigenous’ ontologies and examining the ways in which they correspond (or not) with the tensions evident in more internationalised approaches to Indigeneity, we illuminate the socio‐political challenge of carving out spaces for plural identities and meaningfully diverse economic futures in Timor‐Leste. We argue that the term ‘Indigenous’ is not (yet) a term mobilised as a vehicle for the politics of recognition at either national or local levels of civil society. 20-Jan-2018
An East Timorese domain: Luca from central and peripheral perspectives Barnes, S., Hagerdal, H., Palmer, L. 2017. An East Timorese domain: Luca from central and peripheral perspectives. 'Bidragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (South East Asian Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences)', 173(2-3): 325-355. The East Timorese kingdom Luca is described as the hegemon of the eastern parts of Timor in some nineteenth-century works. This is gainsaid by other data, which point to the existence of a multitude of petty kingdoms. This article scrutinizes Luca's claim to power from a number of angles, utilizing European records and contemporary anthropological fieldwork. First, we analyse the claims of the centre as reflected in colonial and indigenous narratives. Second, we investigate narratives from the 'periphery', that is, the minor adjacent domains of Vessoro and Babulo. Third, we offer a comprehensive discussion of Luca's role from a wider geographical perspective. In this way we produce a 'general account' that situates the symbolic and historical significance of Luca within the Timorese understanding of time, ritual, and power. 20-Jan-2017
Community Economies in Monsoon Asia: Keywords and Key Reflections Gibson, K., Astuti, R., Carnegie, M., Chalernphon, A., Dombroski, K., Haryani, R.A., Hill, A., Kehi, B., Law, L., Lyne, I., McGregor, A., McKinnon, K. McWilliam, A., Miller, F., Ngin, C., Occeña‐Gutierrez, D., Palmer, L., Placino, P., Rampengan, M., Than, W.L., Wianti, N.I. and Wright, S. 2018. Community Economies in Monsoon Asia: Keywords and Key Reflections. 'Asia Pacific Viewpoint', 59(1): 3-16. A diversity of place‐based community economic practices that enact ethical interdependence has long enabled livelihoods in Monsoon Asia. Managed either democratically or coercively, these culturally inflected practices have survived the rise of a cash economy, albeit in modified form, sometimes being co‐opted to state projects. In the modern development imaginary, these practices have been positioned as ‘traditional’, ‘rural’ and largely superseded. But if we read against the grain of modernisation, a largely hidden geography of community economic practices emerges. This paper introduces the project of documenting keywords of place‐based community economies in Monsoon Asia. It extends Raymond William’s cultural analysis of keywords into a non‐western context and situates this discursive approach within a material semiotic framing. The paper has been collaboratively written with co‐researchers across Southeast Asia and represents an experimental mode of scholarship that aims to advance a post‐development agenda. 02-Apr-2018
Convite 20-Jan-0015
Engaging Communities in Resource Development Initiatives in Timor Leste Carvalho, D.A. and PALMER, L. 2012. Engaging Communities in Resource Development Initiatives in Timor Leste. In Langton M. and Longbottom, J. (eds) 'Community Futures, Legal Architecture', Routledge, London, pp. 251-268. In light of Timor-Leste's turbulent history and present-day circumstances, this paper explores the manner in which Timorese communities have been able to engage in the resource development process since the country achieved independence in 2002. We examine a proposed large-scale resource development scheme in the district of Lautem in the country's far east to establish, in a place-based context, the complex relationship between incoming tropes of modernity and extant customary knowledge and resource use. In light of these complexities, we argue for more holistic and effective consultation processes, as well as procedural consistency, in relation to the socio-ecological assessment of large projects in Timor-Leste. 01-Sep-2012
Enlivening development: Water management in the post-conflict city of Baucau, Timor Leste Palmer, L. 2010. Enlivening development: Water management in the post-conflict city of Baucau, Timor Leste. 'Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography', 31: 357-370. This paper explores how the state and others involved in the 'development enterprise' in Timor Leste are (mis)recognizing the potential of the existing environmental governance and exchange capacities of local customary institutions and practices in relation to water supply and management. Examining the problematic of water supply in a post-conflict city, it examines the intermesh of the customary, state and market sectors and ponders how customary institutions might be better supported to extend their range of political and economic credibility and contribute to a reconfiguration of dominant community-managed water supply models. The paper draws on the political and economic theory developed by Gibson-Graham (2006) and draws out in a particular place based instance the workings of a diverse economy where a customary economy is enmeshed with, and to some extent undermining, a weak capitalist sector. The paper argues that a failure to address issues of resource ownership and control and to engage the strengths and import of local customary institutions will have serious ramifications for the successful implementation of Timor Leste's national development objectives in the city of Baucau and elsewhere in Timor Leste. Instead it argues for an enlivened development approach wherein locally socialised landscapes are recognised as credible political sites with which 'development' can engage and power relations can shift. 01-Dec-2010
Exploring the Tensions of Nation Building in Timor Leste. Proceedings from the Forum Palmer, L., Niner, S. and Kent, L. (Eds) 2007. Exploring the Tensions of Nation Building in Timor Leste. 'Proceedings from the Forum', 15 September 2006, SSEE Research Paper No 1. At the University of Melbourne on the 15 the September 2006, around 40 Timorese and Australian academics, representatives of civil society organizations and others, came together for a one-day forum aimed at exploring the underlying causes of the 2006 crisis and the tensions of nation building in Timor-Leste. Central to our discussions and deliberations were themes of governance, social and political processes, development, land and natural resource management and environmental, human security, justice and legal frameworks. 01-Jul-2007
Filmic encounters: Multispecies care and sacrifice on island Timor Abstract/Sumáriu: Iha ensaiu ida-ne’e autór haree fila fali filme sira ne’ebé nia halo durante halo peskiza tinan barak nian. Nia halo reflesaun kona-ba filme nia poder atu hatutan istória ema no animál sira nian liuhusi kapta imajen, lian no emosaun ho forma diretu no kle’an. This is a story about the ‘arts of noticing’ more-than-human noticing. In it I reflect on the ways in which my own practice of ethnographic filmmaking is itself an agent of multisensory participation. As artifice and artificial eye, there is something both liberating and sensuous about filmmaking practice. It heightens the performativity of participants and their embodied rituals and allows me to enter intimate spaces I would otherwise not encounter. In these encounters a deep multispecies noticing takes place, although in the first instance this is usually only by the camera. The intimacy enabled in these artificial but sensorial encounters can be both revealing and confronting, especially in cases of animal sacrifice. Re-encountering footage filmed across years of research-led endeavour, in this paper I explore the power of film to convey these multisensory and multispecies stories, as well as to evoke understanding and engage the multisensory memory of the filmmaker. Aust Journal of Anthropology: 2021;32:80–95. https://doi.org/10.1111/taja.12381 04-Nov-2010
Hamatak Halirin: The cosmological and socio-ecological roles of water in Koba Lima, Timor Kehi, B. and Palmer, L. 2012. Hamatak Halirin: The cosmological and socio-ecological roles of water in Koba Lima, Timor. 'Bidragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (South East Asian Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences)', 168 (4): 446-471. The cosmological and socio-ecological roles of water, in particular spring water, have not been the subject of sustained analysis in the anthropological literatures of the eastern archipelago. Taking as our starting point the central role of water in the origin narratives and ritual practices of Koba Lima, a coalition of five ancient kingdoms located across the division of East Timor and Indonesian West Timor, we explore the profound cosmological meanings and many layered understandings of life and death associated with water. We argue that in this nuanced socio-ecological world, water is the blood and milk of the mother transformed into life itself through father fire. It is through these transformative capacities connected to water that the boundaries separating the visible and invisible worlds can be permeated, enabling the living access to matak malirin or good health and productive life force. The paper is both a contribution to the literature on archipelagic socio-cosmic dualisms and a unique ethnography which presents new material on the significance of water in this region. 01-Dec-2012
HAMETIN HATUTAN LISAN HO AI-MORUK IHA TIMOR-LESTE (Kapa DVD) HAMETIN HATUTAN LISAN HO AI-MORUK IHA TIMOR-LESTE (DVD Cover and descriptions) (min 30 | 2020 | lian: Tetun) Buka kura moras iha Timor-Leste dala barak mak dalan naruk. Timor-oan sira rekoñese no fiar dalan barak atu kura moras ne’ebé envolve aspetu espiritua2l, fíziku no pesoál. Liuhusi observasaun no aprendizajen ema koko kura moras liuhusi dalan oin-oin no mós hatutan matenek ba jerasaun foun. Hametin Hatutan Lisan leno dalan buka kura moras nain hitu husi area rural no urbanu sira iha Munisipiu Baucau, husi tempu resistensia armada to’o Independensia. 01-Jan-2020
HOLA WANI: COURTING BEES IN A DIVIDED LAND (Meanjin, 2019) Sumáriu: Rituál “hola wani” ne’ebé komunidade sira iha área fronteira Timor-Leste/Timor Osidentál hala’o tinan-tinan mak tradisaun ida ne’ebe hatudu povu nia determinasaun atu prezerva unidade sosiál no bani sira-nia movimentasaun livre hakat fronteira. 01-Apr-2019
Koserva Natureza Liu Husi Tara Bandu [Nature Conservation through Ritual Regulation] Carvalho, D., Palmer, L., Delimas, A. and Vieira, P. 2008. Koserva Natureza Liu Husi Tara Bandu [Nature Conservation through Ritual Regulation]. Report prepared for Concern, Dili, Timor Leste. 20-Jan-2008
Kultura ho Bee: Baucau to'o Luca 20-Jan-0015
Land access and livelihoods in post-conflict Timor-Leste: no magic bullets Batterbury, S.P.J., PALMER, L., REUTER, T., CARVALHO, D.A., KEHI, B. AND CULLEN, C. 2015. Land access and livelihoods in post-conflict Timor-Leste: no magic bullets. 'International Journal of the Commons', 9(2): 619-647. In Timor-Leste, customary institutions contribute to sustainable and equitable rural development and the establishment of improved access to and management of land, water and other natural resources. Drawing on multi-sited empirical research, we argue that the recognition and valorization of custom and common property management is a prerequisite for sustainable and equitable land tenure reform in Timor Leste. In a four-community study of the relationship between land access and the practice of rural livelihoods in eastern and western districts of Timor-Leste, where customary management systems are dominant, we found different types of traditional dispute resolution, with deep roots in traditional forms of land management and with varying levels of conflict. The article shows how customary land tenure systems have already managed to create viable moral economies. Interviewees expressed a desire for the government to formalize its recognition and support for customary systems and to provide them with basic livelihood support and services. This was more important than instituting private landholding or state appropriation of community lands, which is perceived to be the focus of national draft land laws and an internationally supported project. We suggest ways in which diverse customary institutions can co-exist and work with state institutions to build collective political legitimacy in the rural hinterlands, within the context of upgrading the quality of rural life, promoting social and ecological harmony, and conflict management. 01-Jun-2015
Lulik Encounters and Cultural Frictions in East Timor: Past and present McWilliam A., Palmer, L., and Shepherd, C., 2014. Lulik Encounters and Cultural Frictions in East Timor: Past and present. 'The Australian Journal of Anthropology', 25: 304-320. In the East Timorese lingua franca, Tetun, the word lulik is often simply translated as 'sacred' or 'forbidden'.But the concept has much wider application as a set of fundamental, philosophical and moral orientations in Timorese social life. In this paper we present six historical and contemporary encounters with lulik, by a range of outsiders from beyond the Timorese tradition. Placed in the context of Sahlin's notion of 'the structure of the conjuncture', they illustrate the way lulik agency adapts to novel or contingent events in culturally inflected ways, and how ideas of lulik may be configured as agents of resistance as well as enabling strategies. 01-Dec-2014
Modernising water: articulating custom in water governance in Australia and Timor-Leste Jackson, S. and Palmer, L. 2012. Modernising water: articulating custom in water governance in Australia and Timor-Leste. 'International Journal of Indigenous Policy', 3(3): 1-24. This paper has four aims: 1.To describe the customary water governance systems of two neighbouring countries (Australia and Timor Leste), each at a different stage of reforming their water sectors 2.Examine the difficulties faced in asserting indigenous and local rights to control waterscapes 3.Reveal lessons 4.Illustrate 2 themes relating to empowerment: •Recognition and prioritisation of community managed systems •Inclusion of ethical concerns and people/nature inter-relationships The modernisation of water governance, which can entail resource commoditisation and privatisation, requires the reformation of water allocation institutions. In many parts of the world, such transformations have empowered statutory systems to dominate or marginalise parallel, extant customary systems of water governance. The water policy and management frameworks of Australia and East Timor (Timor-Leste) are at different stages of a modernisation trajectory; yet, both have extant systems of customary governance and so lend themselves to a comparative analysis. This paper describes the institutions and negotiating arenas through which indigenous peoples of these two countries seek to define, increase or influence their access to water, and the legitimacy of their water related values, ethics, and practices. Institutional transformations are compared alongside local efforts to create space for the co-existence of custom while improving the economic standing of Indigenous and local populations and the environmental quality of their territories. 30-Nov-2012
Nation building and resource management: The politics of ‘nature’ in Timor Leste Palmer, L. and Carvalho, D.A. 2008. Nation building and resource management: The politics of ‘nature’ in Timor Leste. 'Geoforum', 39: 3: 1321-1332. This paper examines the role of custom and tradition in the process of nation building and resource management in post-independence Timor Leste (East Timor). While customary land tenure is alluded to but not explicitly recognized under the Timorese Constitution, it is clearly stated that all natural resources are owned by the State. However, this paper argues that rather than waiting for the government to create land and resource management related laws, local people in Timor Leste are making and remaking their own laws, mobilizing their customary practices and, increasingly, 'performing' their traditions in public demonstrations of their extant capacities. In part, this process can be read as a way of enticing in outsiders, making them a party to the law making process, a witness to its legitimacy. Often critical to such processes, is the ability of local level leaders to draw in outsiders through their engagements with the idea of 'nature'—a concept which allows diverse interests to come together in conversation and build relationships despite what is often a dissonance in the meanings and priorities attributed to the concept (see Tsing, 2005). The paper focuses on a view from the margins—Tutuala in the far east of the country—and ways in which this community is attempting to both resist and embrace the developmental hegemony of a centrist state. This, it is argued, is a case which demonstrates the power of the local (both ritually and politically) to shape and intervene in the national development process and the associated discourses of nature preservation. 01-Oct-2008
Negotiating ‘darkness’ and ‘light’: Meshworks of fluidity and fire in Baucau Palmer L. 2018, Negotiating ‘darkness’ and ‘light’: Meshworks of fluidity and fire in Baucau. In Bovensiepen, J. ‘The Promise of Prosperity: Visions of the Future in Timor-Leste', ANU E Press, pp.189-204. While Timor-Leste’s cosmologies and western philosophy may seem worlds apart, in this chapter I draw on the work of Karen Barad (2003), Tim Ingold (2011, 2015) and Marilyn Strathern (1996) to explore approaches to the materiality of different ‘resources’ in Timor-Leste. By interrogating particular cosmological understandings of water, stone and metal, my aim is to shed light on locally differential attitudes towards modernist development practices – in this case, a cement mine and factory. My argument unfolds by triangulating a discussion of cosmology, landscape and ancestral relations to make connections with, and build a narrative account of, a number of ritual prescriptions and proscriptions involving metals. In this discussion, I focus on the movement and flows of relations that are associated with, and are potentially cut off by, various agencies entangled with metallurgical matter. I ask what all this means for the authorisation of the ongoing activities involved in the creation and use of metals and other hardened objects. By the chapter’s end, I draw these insights into a discussion about visions for the future in TimorLeste framed by particular Timorese approaches to place, the mutual constitution of human and more-than-human agencies, and industrial resource extraction. 20-Jan-2018
PROJETU PESKIZA: DIJITALIZA NO ANALIZA ISTÓRIA KBIIT KOMUNIDADE SIDADE DILI HASORU DEZASTRE 01-May-2023
Reconceptualizing ecosystem services: Possibilities for cultivating and valuing the ethics and practices of care Jackson, S. and Palmer, L. 2015. Reconceptualising Ecosystem Services: Possibilities for cultivating and valuing the ethics and practices of care. 'Progress in Human Geography', 39(2): 122-145. This paper responds to a recent call for geographers to engage with the ecosystem services concept which is an increasingly dominant global model for environmental policy and management. We focus on its economic exchange mechanism, payment for environmental services (PES), and reject the conventional notion of it as either an economic or environmental strategy. Rather than treating a disaggregated nature as the 'fixed stock' of eco-system services, we value instead actual human and non-human interrelations and practices and focus on how we might reconfigure the socio-cultural relations between people and nature as the valued stock. 01-Jun-2015
Spirit Ecologies and Customary Governance in Post-conflict Timor-Leste Abstract/Sumáriu: Iha Timor-Leste iha períodu pos-konflitu, povu hetan kbiit husi relasaun família bazeia ba knua/uma lulik no relasaun espirituál no produtivu ho meiu-ambiente. Iha artigu ida-ne’e, autór sira investiga prátika uma lulik sira ba jestaun ambiente no interasaun sosiál no sira-nia importánsia ba povu nia moris di’ak. In post-conflict Timor-Leste, the concepts of spirit ecologies and intergenerational wellbeing direct our attention to the ways in which Timorese people derive strength from house-based family networks as well as protective and productive spiritual relations with living nature. These practices of exchange resonate with a comparative body of research that has described similar ‘spiritscapes’ elsewhere in Southeast Asia and their relevance for social and environmental governance. Exploring the diverse ontologies of particular Timorese ‘spirit ecologies’ and their embedding in a concept of more-than-human ‘intergenerational wellbeing’, in this article we investigate the renewed significance of these ‘house-based’ practices for social and environmental governance in Timor-Leste. We argue that despite the challenges, multiple engagements of mutually appropriated, transgenerational debt obligations and ritually regulated forms of resource governance are emerging as cultural, and increasingly state-sanctioned, strategies aimed at rebuilding the social and environmental commons. Published by/publika husi: BKI (brill.com/bki) Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 175 (2019) 474–505 20-Dec-2019
Subterranean waters and the ‘curation’ of underground histories in Timor Leste Palmer, L. 2016. Subterranean waters and the ‘curation’ of underground histories in Timor Leste. 'Water History', 8(4): 431-448. This paper examines the historical dynamism of Timorese indigenous waterscapes in order to understand the ways in which local peoples ‘curate’ their regional histories. In the Baucau-Viqueque region of Timor Leste understandings of and interactions with subterranean waters, and the springs from where it emerges, are deeply embedded in the foundational organizing principles of local social, political and economic life. By taking up the idea of springs as an historical “archive” and drawing on regional oral narratives associated with water, migration, rice and irrigation, this paper argues that this localized meshwork (Ingold 2011) of water history functions to encode, communicate, mediate and negotiate historical contingencies and moral values as well as the ongoing possibilities of socio-political futures. In this landscape, springs form the knots that hold together these narrative histories, while their dynamic role as focal points for ritual activities reflects, keeps strong and enables new trans-generational and trans-spatial connections. 14-Sep-2016
Timor Leste: embracing resource governance through ritual in a post-conflict society Palmer, L. 2017. Timor Leste: embracing resource governance through ritual in a post-conflict society. In Hirsch, P. (ed), 'Routledge Handbook of the Environment in Southeast Asia', Routledge, pp. 483-495. 20-Jan-2017
Towards an integrated and accessible mental health care system in Timor Leste (2015) Kakuma, R., Barnes, S., Seixas dos Santos, H. and Palmer, L. 2015. Towards an integrated and accessible mental health care system in Timor Leste. In 'Timor-Leste: The local, the regional and the global'. Swinburne Press, Hawthorn, pp. 264-270. This paper reports on preliminary research carried out by an inter-disciplinary Australian and East Timorese research team which aims to 1) assist the Timorese Ministry of Health (MoH), Timorese NGOs and local communities to develop, deliver and evaluate accessible, culturally sensitive and integrative mental health services; and 2) contribute to the development of more integrated and sustainable health sector policies globally. Three key findings from the preliminary study were 1) the importance of traditional healers and customary practices in the success of mainstream treatment for any health condition; 2) the need to fully understand customary practices, underlying principles and traditional healers’ perspectives about health and mainstream health services, to build effective partnerships with the traditional healer community and to carry out an ethnographic study of their practices; and 3) given the sensitivities and complexities about culture, belief systems and mental health, collaboration with East Timorese researchers is a critical component of advancing knowledge in this field. 20-Jan-2015
Towards an integrated and accessible mental health care system in Timor Leste (2019) Barnes S., Palmer, L., Kakuma, R and Larke, B., 2019. Towards an integrated and accessible mental health care system in Timor Leste. In Leach M. and McWilliam A. (eds) 'Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Timor Leste', pp. 1-19. In this chapter, we first explore diverse understandings of health and healing in Timor-Leste and consider how these play out in the context of mental health. We then identify the range of customary and religious faith-based healers and healing practices commonly consulted by patients with mental illness and their families. Finally, we ask, if and how might customary, other religious and clinical approaches to mental health be woven together to improve equitable access to culturally competent and context-appropriate health services. 20-Jan-2019
Towards an Integrated Approach to Mental Health in Timor Leste, Report on 2015 Forum to the World Health Organisation and Office of the President of TL Kakuma, R., Palmer. L. and Barnes, S. 2015. Towards an Integrated Approach to Mental Health in Timor Leste. 'Report on 2015 Forum to the World Health Organisation and Office of the President of TL.' This Forum was convened to report on the findings of a scoping study carried out in early 2015 by researchers from The University of Melbourne and Monash University in Australia together with the Timorese Ministry of Health (MoH)1. The long‐term aims of this research were, and continue to be, 1) to clarify the role of customary health and healing practices in mental health and mental health care seeking behaviours of the Timorese population as well as stakeholder perspectives on its potential role in the mental health care system in Timor Leste; and 2) to assist the Timorese Ministry of Health (MoH) to develop mental health services that effectively integrate customary practices with mainstream mental health care and improve the quality and coverage of services across the country. Three key findings from the scoping study were that 1) traditional healers and customary practices were considered critical in the success of mainstream treatment for any health condition to open the pathway to healing; 2) there is an urgent need to fully understand customary practices, underlying principles and traditional healers’ perspectives about health and mainstream health services, to build effective partnerships with the traditional healer community; and 3) collaboration with East Timorese researchers is a critical component of advancing knowledge. 07-Jul-2015
Unity and Division: Caring for Humans and Non-humans in a Divided Land Abstract/Sumáriu: Fronteira entre Timor-Leste no Timor Osidentál fahe komunidade iha reinu antigu “Koba Lima” nian ho konsekuénsia ba sira-nia relasaun ho fatin, rai no bee lulik sira. Maski nune’e, Timor nia animál no ai-horis sira kontinua buras no hakat liu fronteiru fíziku hodi garante unidade materiál no espirituál ba povu ne’ebé moris iha área fronteira nian. The border bifurcating the island of Timor was arbitrarily created in the late nineteenth century by the Portuguese and the Dutch. It is a border that has divided and separated the people of the ancient kingdoms of Koba Lima ever since, constraining relationships with their ancestral sacred sites, lands and waters. Timor’s wild animals, plants and natural phenomena challenge this division. Their free co-existence and movement through the region remain essential to the material and spiritual unity of life for people along the border. The ancestral and metaphysical connections they embody and enable are continually honoured in people’s ritual practice and speech, connecting and binding together what cross-island politics has otherwise held apart. In this paper, we trace the effects of this constant mingling of places, words, and morethan- human beings, and elucidate the ways they subtly re-work the material divisions of colonial and now postcolonial borders. The effects of such re-workings are, we argue, to continuously extend boundaries, to celebrate multiplicity and diversity and, despite the many challenges, to determinedly maintain a commitment to practices that ensure cross-species unity and the flow of life. 01-Jan-2019
Water Cosmologies Documenting the holistic, poetic and many layered understanding of being linked to water, this paper interweaves ethnographic insights with the socio-cosmic dualisms found at the heart of Timorese and other eastern archipelagic societies. Exploring the unique capacities of water in this particular regional environment, and the ways that people connect with and adapt to it, expands our understanding of the productive frictions and efficacy of these spiritual ecologies and the ways in which such an inclusive human-nature sociality actually works. It is argued that water is central to both the expression of cosmological ideas and the understanding of life itself. Chapter from book 'Water Politics and Spiritual Ecology: Custom, Environmental Governance and Development' 24-Jun-2015
Water Politics and Spiritual Ecology: Introduction Palmer, L. (2015) Water politics and Spiritual Ecology: Custom, environmental governance and development. Routledge Explorations in Environmental Studies, London and New York, 214pp. 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. Integrating the concept of spiritual ecology with a critical analysis of the hydrosocial cycle, this introduction examines the ways in which modern water governance regimes have engaged with custom and tradition in Timor Leste and elsewhere. 24-Jun-2015
Water Relations: Customary Systems and the Management of Baucau City’s Water Palmer, L. 2011 Water Relations: Customary Systems and the Management of Baucau City's Water. In Land and Life in Timor-Leste: Ethnographic Essays, (eds.) A. McWillam & E. Traube. Pp 141-162. Canberra: ANU E-Press. 01-Dec-2011
Wild Honey: Caring for Bees in a Divided Land Study Guide 02-Dec-2019