166-211 East Timor: History, Politics & Culture

Usually 25 points of first-year politics and/or Asian studies

This subject explores East Timorese history, politics, culture, languages and literatures from a trans-historical and multi-disciplinary perspective. The subject engages with colonial historiography (Portuguese, Dutch, Indonesian), anthropology/ethnography, literature and oral traditions, travel accounts, film, religion, and social movements. The subject critically examines the intervention of international organisations in the decolonisation and state-building processes. We will engage with texts that raise issues such as the position of poor women in East Timor in relation to their social and political communities; the ways in which poor people are located in the building of the new state/nation/community; and the ways that local communities define what it means to build 'democratic' institutions. Students should become familiar with critiques of conventional approaches to the study of political and social transformations, discourses of power, women's political agency, development, control over economic and natural resources, human rights, and technologies of violence.