This article discusses aspects of the topogenic processes involved in the East
Timor nation building. Foho (mountains) and Dili are so presented as particular places,
devised as products of long-lasting government practices in Timor. Based on the
controversies surrounding marriage prestations in the contemporary Dili, the
representations projected onto the foho are explored. I argue that the mountains are
characterized, among others things, as the loci of “usos e costumes†(customs), of sacred
lands and objects, of origin houses, of customary law, and of the ancestors to whom most
East Timor people are related and where a series of required rituals are performed to
maintain the normal flow of life. As in many other territories that were colonized
belatedly, we see in East Timor the urban/rural, town/hinterland oppositions at work
which resulted from colonial bifurcate State. While placing such oppositions on a
comparative perspective with Oceanic and South Eastern Asian countries, I also claim
that they are the base for the politics of custom that have been re-emerged in the postcolonial
East Timor.
This article discusses aspects of the topogenic processes involved in the East
Timor nation building. Foho (mountains) and Dili are so presented as particular places,
devised as products of long-lasting government practices in Timor. Based on the
controversies surrounding marriage prestations in the contemporary Dili, the
representations projected onto the foho are explored. I argue that the mountains are
characterized, among others things, as the loci of “usos e costumes†(customs), of sacred
lands and objects, of origin houses, of customary law, and of the ancestors to whom most
East Timor people are related and where a series of required rituals are performed to
maintain the normal flow of life. As in many other territories that were colonized
belatedly, we see in East Timor the urban/rural, town/hinterland oppositions at work
which resulted from colonial bifurcate State. While placing such oppositions on a
comparative perspective with Oceanic and South Eastern Asian countries, I also claim
that they are the base for the politics of custom that have been re-emerged in the postcolonial
East Timor.
