This volume is one of the most intellectually satisfying books in Timor Studies in recent years, and will serve as a launching pad for an overdue scholarly discussion about the role of knowledge producers (scholars, the Portuguese and the Indonesians, international officers, aid workers, filmmakers, and so forth) in Timor-Leste. Through the contributors’ critical reflections on their archival and fieldwork experiences, this collection of essays engages with the power relations, positionality, and contingencies that have characterised Timor Studies and social changes in Timor-Leste. This will undoubtedly be a must-read work for scholars and students of Timor-Leste, and of interest to those who conduct fieldwork in Southeast Asia.
Apart from a useful introduction, the volume contains ten case studies of varying quality, but each chapter makes a distinctive contribution to the whole. Although most of the contributors are anthropologists, this is compensated for by the inclusion of a range of scholars and intellectuals from diverse generations, genders, nationalities and academic disciplines. Such diversity enables us to be privy to various circumstances that only the fieldworkers experience. As a whole, this volume maintains a non-political stance while allowing each author to express her/his own inclinations. Such non-political academic work is appreciated under the current state of Timor Studies dominated as it is by politically engaged scholarship.
Most of the chapters deal with power relations that characterise the field and archival work that constitute Timor Studies. Researchers experience various power-relations in different settings, and it affects their representations of Timor. An interesting example is the last chapter by Amy Rothschild which narrates her failed attempt to observe the making of a feature film. The film features a massacre that occurred in the village of Kraras. But Rothschild was denied the opportunity to complete her observation of the filming by the filmmaker. She analyses this incident as a competition between two outsiders, both of whom feel that they have the ownership over representation of the village and its experiences. To borrow the author's words, both the academic and the filmmaker were ‘capitalizing on the tragic and valuable story of human suffering’ for the international audience (p. 235). Thus, she points out the workings of strong external stakeholders within the country even in the post-independence period. Other chapters, such as those by Ricardo Roque and Douglas Kammen, present different perspectives on this issue by sharing their experience of investigating written documents. The lack of case studies from the Indonesian period in this volume itself attests to the power of the state to control information.
Another important theme is the influence of the historical period during which one's fieldwork takes place. In the second chapter, David Hicks compares his first fieldwork period in 1966–67 with his more recent experiences after 1999. His account, along with some others, (for example, the chapters by Andrew McWilliam and Pyone Myat Thu) discuss how scholarly representations of the Timorese culture have been influenced by historical settings and contingencies. Hicks reveals, for example, that his selection of research site and encounters with its people was partially framed by Ruy Cinatti, a senior Portuguese anthropologist who acted as a ‘gatekeeper’ of research in colonial Portuguese Timor (p. 35). Hicks also notes that the villagers became more willing to talk about local traditions in the post-independence period in comparison to his earlier fieldwork stint, and he attributes this to the change in religio-political orientations. This study and other chapters observe the social changes from the colonial era to the contemporary time through such local experiences.
Third, and the most conspicuous theme, is positionality in Timorese societies. The authors, for example, question how being European, Asian, or Timorese affects the fieldworker's attempts to collect information. Another important discussion within this theme is the internalisation of supposedly external actors in Timor-Leste. Judith Bovensiepen's chapter explores the reasons behind two significant pro-Indonesian integrationists’ political decisions in the 1970s through her research on the local history of Laclubar village. She explains that the integrationists could trace their ancestry to the sacred land of Wehali (a village in Indonesian Timor), and that ‘Indonesia’ was ‘inside’ of their imagined homeland. Such local history distinguished them from pro-Portuguese or pro-independent-Timor-Leste villagers who did not claim the same origin (p. 164). Similarly, Angie Bexley's chapter on Timorese youth approaches the topic of Timorese internalisation of Indonesian cultural capital, from the perspective of an author who is an Indonesian language speaker trained in Indonesia Studies. Maj Nygaard-Christensen focuses on another actor—the United Nations (UN). He discusses how the supposedly neutral international organisation participated in the development of local political discourses, and how it affected Timorese employees in the UN system. The role of external actors in the making of Timorese nationhood and national discourse is particularly important, but most of these themes have been neglected or marginalised within the scholarly discussions about Timor-Leste.
Finally, it is significant that this volume has launched an academic conversation among the East Timorese nationalist discourse, the (post-)conflict paradigm, Austronesian Studies, Indonesian Studies, and Southeast Asian Studies. Previously, there had been a noticeable intellectual cleavage between the East Timorese nationalist discourse and the various area studies perspectives under the Indonesian occupation and Timor-Leste's post-independence atmosphere. This volume manages to incorporate problematic local complexities that these standard approaches have avoided. As a result, it destabilises the stereotypical views of the anthropological Timorese and political East Timorese.
Yet, the discussions about these themes are not exhaustive. Important omissions in this volume include experiences at archives in Timor-Leste and Indonesia, research that involves Christianity, and a critical analysis of how the authors’ nationalities affected their scholarly writings. These omissions do not detract from the value of the book. Instead, they should be regarded as potential topics for future academic discussions about Timor Studies. This book is highly recommended for students and researchers who are interested in Timor-Leste, Indonesia, and fieldwork in Southeast Asia. Practitioners in Timor-Leste can benefit from this book as well.
