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’.

List of Illustrations and Tables
Introduction
Economic diversity in contemporary Timor-Leste (Kelly Silva, Lisa Palmer and Teresa Cunha)
GLIMPSES OF THE COLONIAL ECONOMY
Chapter 1 - The colonial bazaar in ‘Portuguese Timor’: The taming of the ‘savage marketers’ (Lúcio Sousa)
Chapter 2 - Indexing social space. A marketplace in Timor-Leste (David Hicks)
Chapter 3 - Flirting with Ford, reverting to race? Housing, urban planning and the making of an economic and social order in Portuguese Timor in trans-colonial perspective, 1959-1963 (Alex Grainger)
LOCAL ECONOMIC DYNAMICS
Chapter 4 - On the existence and persistence of the social category of atan in contemporary Timor-Leste (Susanna Barnes)
Chapter 5 - The serimónia network: Economic mobilisation through rituals in the hamlet of Faulara, Liquiçá (Alberto Fidalgo-Castro and Enrique Alonso-Población)
Chapter 6 - Household Decision-Making Processes and Family Resources: A Case Study from Viqueque (Josh Trindade and Ivete de Oliveira)
Chapter 7 - Gift economy and the acknowledgement of debt: (On) Living and eating with ‘mystical’ actors in Timorese houses (Renata Nogueira da Silva)
Chapter 8 - The work of women in Eluli and land economies in Timor-Leste (Teresa Cunha and Mina Bessa)
ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATIONS
Chapter 9 - Land and diet under pressure: The impacts of Suai Supply Base in Kamanasa Kingdom (Brunna Crespi)
Chapter 10 - The socio-cultural benefits of emerging market-based instruments for carbon in Timor-Leste (Lisa Palmer and Sue Jackson)
Chapter 11 - China’s Engagement in Timor-Leste’s Economy (Laurentina ‘Mica’ Barreto Soares)
Chapter 12 - Migrant Work and Homecoming: Experiences of Timorese seasonal workers (Ann Wigglesworth and Abel Boavida dos Santos)
Chapter 13 - Refashioning Fataluku Origin Houses (Andrew McWilliam)
Chapter 14 - The frente ekonomika (economic front). Timorese perspectives on seasonal work in Australia (Michael Rose)
About the authors
Index