Author : Michael Rose
Publisher : Amsterdam University Press
ISBN 13 : 9048550343
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (485 download)
Book Synopsis Indigenous Spirits and Global Aspirations in a Southeast Asian Borderland by : Michael Rose
Download or read book Indigenous Spirits and Global Aspirations in a Southeast Asian Borderland written by Michael Rose and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-05 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past 40 years, life in Timor-Leste has changed radically. Before 1975 most of the population lived in highland villages, spoke local languages, and rarely used money. Today many have moved to peri-urban lowland settlements, and even those whose lives remain dominated by customary ways understand that those of their children will not. For the Atoni Pah Meto of the island's west, the world was neatly divided into two distinct categories: the meto (indigenous), and the kase (foreign). Now things are less clear; the good things of the outside world are pursued not through rejecting the meto ways of the village, or collapsing them into the kase, but through continual crossing between them. In this way, the people of Oecussi are able to identify in the struggles of lowland life, the comforting and often decisive presence of familiar highland spirits.