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Embedded in the land: customary social relations and practices of resilience in an East Timorese community

journal contribution
posted on 2012-08-01, 00:00 authored by Victoria SteadVictoria Stead
Drawing on a case study of Cacavei, a rural subsistence community in Timor-Leste, this article explores the mutually constitutive relationship between people and land within customary forms of society. Patterns of land use and connection to land are not simply reflective of genealogical modes of social organisation, but are also enabling of them. Particularly, the embedding of ancestors within the land offers a means of accessing kinship relationships beyond the genealogical present. Embeddedness provides a quality of embodiment that makes ancestors active participants in social life. Constituted in the relational nexus of people and land, forms of social organisation in Cacavei have a mutability which goes some way to explaining the community’s resilience in spite of forced displacement and cultural disruption during the period of Indonesian occupation. This mutability might be considered more broadly as a source of resilience for customary communities grappling with modernising processes of change.

History

Journal

Australian journal of anthropology

Volume

23

Issue

2

Pagination

229 - 247

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Asia

Location

Melbourne, Vic.

ISSN

1035-8811

eISSN

1757-6547

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2012, Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Asia

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