How Timor-Leste Infllulenced my Academic Career (original) (raw)
PRESIDENT Xanana Gusmao may have prophesied when he told fellow East Timorese four years ago that �raising our flag will not mean that malaria will suddenly disappear, or that domestic violence will suddenly end, or that we all will have enough food, education, electricity, roads, or jobs. We dreamed of independence, but now we dream of development and of being a developed nation.� Those words can never be more relevant at present as the world's tiniest and youngest nation is thrust again into socio-political turmoil threatening to rip the fabric of the nation -this time from within not from without.
Timor-Leste: The Harsh Reality After Independence
Southeast Asian Affairs, 2007
Even set against its long history of misery, 2006 was one of Timor-Leste's worst years. While there have been other years in which more people have died and in which its physical infrastructure has been more destroyed, 2006 saw, if not the ending of a dream, then the harsh realization that the value of independence was only as good as its political community made it. In 2006, Timor-Leste's political community tore itself apart, setting in train an internal conflict that had scope to run well beyond the year's end, and which threatened to relegate the country to the status of just another post-colonial failed state.
Published by the Timor Information Service in early 1976 this booklet was used by the Diplomatic Front at the United Nations in its early work to establish the right of Timor-Leste to self-determination.
Comparative and International Education, 2015
aims to provide a comprehensive range of titles, making available to readers work from across the comparative and international education research community. Authors will represent as broad a range of voices as possible, from geographic, cultural and ideological standpoints. The editors are making a conscious effort to disseminate the work of newer scholars as well as that of well-established writers. The series includes authored books and edited works focusing upon current issues and controversies in a field that is undergoing changes as profound as the geopolitical and economic forces that are reshaping our worlds. The series aims to provide books which present new work, in which the range of methodologies associated with comparative education and international education are both exemplified and opened up for debate. As the series develops, it is intended that new writers from settings and locations not frequently part of the English language discourse will find a place in the list.
Movimentu Kultura: Making Timor-Leste
Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Timor-Leste, 2019
The contribution of contemporary art practices for Timor-Leste’s national building is highly significant. Especially since the restoration of independence in 2002, both the authorities and the population have been promoting the consolidation of national identity. The change of political landscape has provided the artistic community with a valuable opportunity to identify and propose values, trends, and community symbols of the new nation. Artists have successfully forged a space of artistic and political intervention, but their input has largely been segregated from broader nation-building efforts that characterize those promoted by the official authorities. This ghettoization has enabled artists to maintain a free discourse, imbued with notions of the avant-garde. Yet, their critical messages have not reached local authorities. Instead, their impact remained mostly confined to the attention granted by the international community residing in the country as well as the artist community itself.
The Promise of Prosperity: Visions of the Future in Timor-Leste
The Promise of Prosperity: Visions of the Future in Timor-Leste
ThE PROMISE OF PROSPERITY x FVF Fundação dos Veteranos das FALINTIL [FALINTIL Veterans Foundation] GDP gross domestic product HIV/AIDS Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome LNG Liquified Natural Gas MU Ministério do Ultramar [Ministry of Overseas Territories] RAEOA
A New Era? Timor-Leste after the UN
This edited book, a product of the inaugural Timor-Leste Update held at the Australian National University in 2013 to mark the end of Timor-Leste’s first decade as a new nation and an end to 14 years of UN political and peacekeeping missions, brings together a vibrant collection of papers from leading and emerging scholars and policy analysts. Collectively, the chapters provide a set of critical reflections on recent political, economic and social developments in Timor-Leste. The volume also looks to the future, highlighting a range of transitions, prospects and undoubted challenges facing the nation over the next 5-10 years. Key themes that inform the collection include nation-building in the shadow of history, trends in economic development, stability and social cohesion, and citizenship, democracy and social inclusion.
Total and Complete Independence in Contemporary Timor-Leste: Phantasmal Hopes
Timor-Leste Studies Association (TLSA), 2019
This paper analyses the nexus between the discourses of maritime boundary delimitation, the promises of the flow of petrodollars, and the aspiration for total and complete independence. It by presents a radical ‘discourse analysis’ to advance the critical understanding of the systemic structure of Timor-Leste’s independence. First I will discuss the notion of Total and Complete Independence more critically, engaging with the politico-historical, moral and ideological roots of Timor-Leste’s national liberation struggle, and the second, I examine the ambition of oil processing and the maritime boundary struggle as part of ritual power struggle within the ruling establishment.
Dialogues with Timor-Leste's gerasaun independensia - is there room for other histories?
in Kelly Silva, Daniel Simião, Ana Carolina Oliveira, Therese Tam e Alberto Fidalgo Castro (org.), Continuidades e Novas Sínteses em Timor-Leste: Anais da 1ª Conferência TLSA-BR, Belo Horizonte, Brasil: Casa Apoema, 163-170, 2019
In Timor-Leste, the life experiences of individuals are intertwined with distinct historical times and social contexts, which include Portuguese colonialism, Japanese occupation, the struggle for independence from a second coloniser nation (Indonesia), a UN administration and, finally, self- government. Similarly to other colonised nations, these ‘encounters with modernity’ produced a plurality of experiences in ordinary people’s lives (Waterson 2007, 3). In the case of Timor-Leste, these were built upon prevailing world views, moral regimes and governing systems of pre-colonial times, known as kultura or lisan, which are central in East Timorese society. The youngest generation in Timor-Leste, known as gerasaun independensia, is the first of the living generations that did not take part in the resistance against Indonesian occupation. Conversations about history and (post-)memories of colonialism reveal the perceptions of these young East Timorese, who have diverse cultural origins and educational experiences, of its own history and identity. Strong oral traditions and the scarcity of accounts on the history of the country, written or produced by East Timorese, created the conditions for memory and oral intergenerational transmission of stories being the most common mediums of preserving the knowledge of the past. This paper presents findings of a study on the East Timorese post-colonial generation’s multilayered knowledges of the country’s recent history. I argue that this ‘intergenerational archive of histories’ has been influential in the drive for a ‘timorisation’ movement of historical production and memorialisation practices. Finally, I look into recent initiatives by East Timorese to write their own history and the possibilities of embracing a plurality of voices in the telling of the country’s history(ies).
Lessons Learned in Timor-Leste
World Politics Review, 2009
A little more than 10 years after the people of what is now Timor-Leste voted for independence, this small, half-island country has compressed into a few short years what many other post-colonial states have taken decades to achieve. It has been largely destroyed, achieved independence, had a political crisis, transitioned to democracy, and now appears to be heading into a period of political calm and economic growth. After the near-catastrophic events of 2006, Timor-Leste's prospects are looking relatively positive, even if a number of important caveats apply.
1: Timor and historical research
BRILL eBooks, 2012
Timor and historical research Timor is situated to the northwest of [Zhong-] Jia Luo. Its mountains do not grow any other trees but sandalwood that is most abundant. It is traded for silver, iron, cups [of porcelain], cloth from Western countries and coloured taffetas. There are altogether twelve localities which are called ports. There is a local chieftain. The soil is suitable for the raising of grain. The climate is irregular, hot in the day, cool at night. The habits of the natives are obscene. Men and women cut their hair and wear short cotton skirts. They tie them around with cloth from Champa. Market prices of spirits and meats are reasonable. The women are shameless. The tribal chiefs are fond of food, wine and sex, and when sleeping they do not cover themselves so that those who get infected [by diseases] die for the most part. If one has been careless while among the natives, the disease will break out with attacks of high fever once the ship has returned to China. 1 This is how a Chinese geographer presented the distant Southeast Asian island circa 1350, and it is one of the earliest known descriptions. About 450 years later, in 1801, the French explorer Péron 2 described the same land in somewhat more elaborate language: 3 Barely two days had passed since we left the dry coasts of New Holland, and we could already behold the lofty mountains of Timor. Three sets of haughty rocks, running parallel to the length of the island, con-1 Dao yi Zhi lue (circa1350), quoted in Ptak 1983:37. 2 Not to be confused with Jean-Baptiste Pelon, a Frenchman in Dutch service who wrote a valuable study of Timor in 1778, Description de Timor occidental et des îles sous domination hollandaise (1771-1778); see Pelon 2002. 3 Please note that all translations of non-English sources are mine, unless otherwise indicated.