Elsevier

Geoforum

Volume 39, Issue 3, May 2008, Pages 1321-1332
Geoforum

Nation building and resource management: The politics of ‘nature’ in Timor Leste

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2007.09.007Get rights and content

Abstract

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, A.L., 2005. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford). 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.

Introduction

In post-independence Timor Leste people are seeking to rebuild the local and regional social and economic ties which were repressed under the violent twenty-five year Indonesian military occupation of their country.1 In the districts, sub-districts and villages across the country people are embracing a dynamic process of cultural revival grounded in the norms and principles of local customs and traditions. This paper explores what this cultural revival might mean in the context of nation building and resource management. Our central thesis is that while these processes might emanate from the local, they are as much about people seeking a voice in national and regional politics and planning. We describe in detail the activities of one community in the far east of the country and the ways in which they are seeking to combine such a reinvigoration of their customs and traditions with an increased social and political visibility for their lifeways at the national level. We show how they have done this, in part, by ‘performing’ these traditions for the nation, not through a calculated strategic essentialism, but we will argue, through their own political reading of the power of these customs and traditions to reformulate ‘outside’ concepts and in this process engage others in the fabric of their own lifeworlds.

Exploring the dilemma of marginality, this paper turns attention away from “political centres” to “political peripheries” (Tsing, 1993, p. 27). We do this, however, while also acknowledging that the Timorese government itself has only recently made the transition from a struggle for independence on the periphery of Indonesian rule to centre stage in the building of its own nation state. Achieving nationhood under the banner of what Benedict Anderson (2003) has termed ‘aggregated nativeness’, Timor Leste’s nationalist agenda is now engaged in the search for futures. Yet, in the struggle to rebuild Timor Leste’s economy, infrastructure and institutions, the issue of power-sharing and centralisation is increasingly contentious (Philpott, 2006, Kehi, 2005).2 With most land and resource management laws as yet unformed, critical issues for debate include the extent to which the national development agenda is allowing spaces for the active involvement of indigenous Timorese traditions, practices and priorities in the governance and economic development of the nation.3

Chopra (2002) and Philpott (2006) have both argued that the governance of the nation state in Timor Leste has been informed by the lasting legacy of the United Nations Transitional Administration (UNTAET) era from 1999 to 2002, when the United Nations (UN) administration mandated with temporary sovereignty over the territory took a ground zero approach to rebuilding the administrative and governance structures of the new nation. While for the Timorese it was a significant moment of new nation-hood, for the UN it was a significant opportunity to build a state from the ground up. It was an approach that the then Timorese leadership and its government-in-waiting criticized as being exclusive and neo-colonial. Yet, undeniably it was a strongly centralised approach that also characterized the inaugural Timorese national Government4 and the development of an administrative system, where despite the rhetoric and promises of imminent decentralization, district and local government officials had no capacity or budget of their own to plan for development or implement programs.5

The influence of a highly centralized style of governance on the implementation of national development plans and the creation of new systems of land administration and resource management cannot be underestimated. Within such statist approaches to land and resource management, there is little room for the recognition of locally specific governance regimes and aspirations. Yet in a tiny half island nation where the majority of the land and resources are presently held under complex systems of customary ownership, systems often referred to in Tetum as fiar-malu (trusting/believing/having faith in one another), the misrecognition of extant governance capacity and systems of management is both a waste of human resources and ill-informed approach to human development creating mistrust and disbelief between the institutions of government and its citizens. Yet for now at least, the reach of the modern bureaucratic state in Timor Leste is far from complete and within this bureaucratic vacuum people are getting on with life, making and upholding their own laws and building alliances with others in order to manage, and hopefully benefit from, change and uncertainty. This paper, which centres on a sea worm harvest which occurred in the far east of the country in early 2006, is an account of one such process.

The meta-narrative of the paper involves an examination of national and international interest in the preservation and protection of the ‘natural’ and ‘cultural’ heritage values of this particular part of Timor, and analyses this in the context of efforts made by local peoples to encourage the understanding of the area as a lived social landscape where ‘culture’ and ‘nature’ are overtly integrated into local lifeworlds. The paper explores the ideological tensions at work between these differential ‘cultures of nature’ and examines the consequences of the public interplay between them.

Section snippets

A view from the margins

On 19 March 2006 in the vicinity of Tutuala (see Fig. 1), a subdistrict of Lautem in the far east of Timor Leste, local community members began the ritual ceremonies required to usher in the annual mass harvest of a much anticipated culinary delicacy–sea worms, or mechi boot in the local language of Fataluku. An array of outsiders–government officials, national media and NGOs–were invited to attend, participate in and most importantly, witness the event.

The significance of Mechi

What is significant about this story is the fact that it is not an unfamiliar one in post-independence Timor Leste: Across the half island nation there is a resurgence of traditional laws and customs relating to resource use, and local people in the districts are reveling in their freedom to re-instigate many practices which were repressed during two and a half decades of violent Indonesian rule (Carvalho and Haburas Foundation, in preparation, D’Andrea et al., 2003, Yoder, 2005, McWilliam, 2003

The harvest

At a similar time each year the mechi boot harvest takes place in the pristine coastal shallows of mainland Valu Beach and the adjacent island of Jaco (Totina in Fataluku). The site is significant for a number of reasons, perhaps most importantly it is the place where the tasi mane (the aggressive male south coast sea) and tasi feto (the calm female north coast sea) come together as one, mixing together the essences of what is otherwise one of Timor’s most culturally and ecologically salient

Talking to the nation

As argued above, the 2006 mechi harvest was also significant as the self-conscious expansion of the local political and ritual spheres into the national body politic.

The politics of nature conservation

It is not only in recent times that Tutuala and the surrounding regions have attracted the attention of the outside world. In the 1960s the distinctive architecture of the region’s elongated sacred houses saw the area promoted as a unique cultural attraction by the Portuguese tourism industry. This architecture combined with a rich living and material culture, such as rock art, has also attracted the research interests of many anthropologists and archeologists (De Almeida and Zbyszewski, 1967,

Conclusion

While the national government elite pays at least lip service to a decentralization agenda enshrined in the Constitution, there is currently far less attention paid to implementing the limited constitutional recognition that there is for customary laws. When the centre does journey to the margins to engage the local customary systems, the tendency is for a superficial engagement – one that does little more than abuse the access to extant social capital, using local ceremonies as an occasion to

Acknowledgements

Fieldwork for this paper in 2006 was carried out by Palmer with the assistance of an Australian Research Council Grant, The Implementation of Agreements and Treaties with Indigenous and Local Peoples in Postcolonial States. The authors would like to thank members of the Tutuala community for hosting them at the mechi ceremony. We would also like to gratefully acknowledge Abilio Fonseca, Julio da Conceicao, Andrew McWilliam, Marcia Langton, Simon Batterbury and two anonymous referees for their

References (48)

  • W. Adams et al.

    Biodiversity conservation and the eradication of poverty

    Science

    (2004)
  • B. Anderson

    Nationalism and cultural survival in our time: a sketch

  • S. Batterbury

    Development, planning, and agricultural knowledge on the Central Plateau of Burkina Faso

  • D. Carvalho

    Code de conduta klibir turismo etiku – tutuala

    Tutuala Ethical Tourism Group and Haburas Foundation

    (2007)
  • Carvalho, D., & Haburas Foundation, in preparation. Tara Bandu Sebagai Salah Satu Kearifan Ecologi Timor...
  • H. Caspers

    Spawning periodicity and habitat of the palolo worm Eunice viridis (Polychaeta: Eunicidae) in the Samoan Islands

    Marine Biology

    (1984)
  • CAVR, 2006. Chega! Final report of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor. Online 30 June...
  • J. Chopra

    Building state failure in East Timor

    Development and Change

    (2002)
  • Cinatti, R., de Alemida, L., Mendes, S., 1987. Arquitectura Timorense. Lisboa, Instituto de investigação Cientifica...
  • C. D’Andrea et al.

    The customary use and management of natural resources in Timor Leste

    Oxfam Timor Leste and GTZ-German Technical Cooperation and DTP, Directorate of Land and Property Timor Leste

    (2003)
  • A. De Almeida et al.

    A contribution to the study of the prehistory of Portuguese Timor – Lithic Industries

  • J. Dunn

    East Timor: A Rough Passage to Independence

    (2003)
  • Encyclopedia Britannica, 2007. Palolo Worm. Encyclopedia Britannica. Online 24 July 2007....
  • D. Fitzpatrick

    Land Claims in Timor Leste

    (2002)
  • D. Fitzpatrick

    ‘Best practice’ options for the legal recognition of customary tenure

    Development and Change

    (2005)
  • D. Fitzpatrick et al.

    Waiting for law: land custom and regulation in Timor-Leste

    Development Bulletin

    (2005)
  • D. Geirnart-Martin

    The Woven Land of the Laboya: Socio-cosmic ideas and values in West Sumba, eastern Indonesia

    (1992)
  • D. Geirnart-Martin

    In honour of seaworms

  • I. Glover

    Archaeology in Eastern Timor, 1966–67

    (1986)
  • T. Hohe

    Totem polls: indigenous concepts and ‘free and fair’ elections in east Timor

    International Peacekeeping

    (2002)
  • R. Howitt

    Rethinking Resource Management: Justice, Sustainability and Indigenous Peoples

    (2001)
  • IUCN, 1994. Guidelines for Protected Area Management Categories. Cambridge,...
  • Kehi, B., 2005. Friendship city relations between communities and local governments in Australia and in Timor Leste:...
  • M. Langton et al.

    Community oriented protected areas for indigenous peoples and local communities

    Journal of Political Ecology

    (2005)
  • Cited by (45)

    • Conceptualizing coastal and maritime cultural heritage through communities of meaning and participation

      2021, Ocean and Coastal Management
      Citation Excerpt :

      In addition to understanding and responding to these risks and threats to CMCH, sustainable management of CMCH requires understanding CMCH as the result of interactions of actors in communities of meaning and communities of participation. CH draws its meanings and importance from its invocation of memory (Vecco, 2010; Parkinson et al., 2016; Burström, 2009; Antonova and Rieser, 2018), a sense of shared identity and/or experience (Parkinson et al., 2016; Holtorf, 2011; Claesson, 2011), and community building and maintenance (Holtorf, 2011; Palmer and de Carvalho, 2008). In connection to coastal tourism, heritage narratives have become an increasingly important means of distinction although in different local iterations (Egberts and Hundstad, 2019).

    View all citing articles on Scopus

    In this paper language translations for key Timorese concepts are provided in the national language of Tetum or less frequently in the local language of Fataluku (in which case they are identified as such in the text or by the placement of an F: prior to the English translation).

    View full text