TY - JOUR
T1 - Engaging Processes of Sense-Making and Negotiation in Contemporary Timor-Leste
AU - Bexley, Angie
AU - Nygaard-Christensen, Maj
PY - 2013/11
Y1 - 2013/11
N2 - The articles in this special issue build on past ethnographic inquiries and focus on political and social change since Timor-Leste independence. One of the things we have found particularly exciting about researching post-independent Timor-Leste has been to carry out fieldwork in a context where not just researchers, but also our informants, are caught up in processes of sense-making of determining what kind of place Timor-Leste as an independent nation is becoming. The reality of ethnographic research in such a context is far different from, as Ferguson (1999, 208) has it, the archetypal image of the anthropologist dropped into the middle of a cultural homogenous village community where the researcher acquires from local informants a degree of cultural fluency. Rather, while we as researchers have tried to learn about Timor-Leste, our informants, as citizens of a new nation, have been absorbed in a parallel process of learning, deliberating and at times contesting what kind of place Timor-Leste as an independent nation is, and should become in the future (see Kammen 2009). In other words, making sense of independent Timor- Leste has, over the past decade, been a project that preoccupies Timorese citizens as much as the foreign researcher. This issue addresses some of these processes of sense-making and negotiation; and highlights the ambiguities and paradoxes, while stressing the heterogeneity and unpredictability of contemporary Timor-Leste.
AB - The articles in this special issue build on past ethnographic inquiries and focus on political and social change since Timor-Leste independence. One of the things we have found particularly exciting about researching post-independent Timor-Leste has been to carry out fieldwork in a context where not just researchers, but also our informants, are caught up in processes of sense-making of determining what kind of place Timor-Leste as an independent nation is becoming. The reality of ethnographic research in such a context is far different from, as Ferguson (1999, 208) has it, the archetypal image of the anthropologist dropped into the middle of a cultural homogenous village community where the researcher acquires from local informants a degree of cultural fluency. Rather, while we as researchers have tried to learn about Timor-Leste, our informants, as citizens of a new nation, have been absorbed in a parallel process of learning, deliberating and at times contesting what kind of place Timor-Leste as an independent nation is, and should become in the future (see Kammen 2009). In other words, making sense of independent Timor- Leste has, over the past decade, been a project that preoccupies Timorese citizens as much as the foreign researcher. This issue addresses some of these processes of sense-making and negotiation; and highlights the ambiguities and paradoxes, while stressing the heterogeneity and unpredictability of contemporary Timor-Leste.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84886386264&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/14442213.2013.834959
DO - 10.1080/14442213.2013.834959
M3 - Editorial
SN - 1444-2213
VL - 14
SP - 399
EP - 404
JO - Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology
JF - Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology
IS - 5
ER -