Economic Diversity in Contemporary Timor-Leste

Economic Diversity in Contemporary Timor-Leste analyses various economic dynamics in past and present Timor-Leste. Comprising 14 research chapters, the volume brings to the fore: 1) local, community-based economic values and arrangements; 2) community-based entanglements with a market-driven economy; 3) the colonial and postcolonial governance praxis through which a market-driven economy has permeated the country, and 4) the creative and place-based ways through which local people have responded to these transformations. The collection challenges hegemonic, market-driven analyses which characterise Timor-Leste’s economy as weak, deformed and homogenised and demonstrates the myriad of socially embedded ways through which Timor-Leste’s economy is diverse, richly complex and continually brought into being. To frame the analysis of these complex economic dynamics in Timor-Leste, the collection’s introduction develops the concept of economic ecologies: the assemblages of institutions and their localised and historical relationships mobilised for reproducing collective life, both in its material and immaterial aspects.

Kelly Silva is an associate professor at the University of Brasilia (UnB) and a CNPq (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, in Portuguese) research fellow. Since 2000, she has researched processes of invention, transposition and subversion of modernity in Timor-Leste, covering issues such as development praxis, political disputes and economic change.

Lisa Palmer is an associate professor and human geographer at the University of Melbourne who teaches and researches environmental relations and indigenous approaches to environmental and social governance. Her research takes a critical ecological approach and is focused on Timor-Leste and Indigenous Australia.

Teresa Cunha holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Coimbra. She is an associate professor at the College of Education and a senior researcher at the Center for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra; She lectures in several PhD Courses and co-coordinates the Gender Workshop Series and the Research Program ‘Epistemologies of the South’.