The Relative Resilience of Property: First Possession and Order Without Law in East Timor

Abstract

Much of the recent literature on customary property relations in sub-Saharan Africa has highlighted underlying characteristics of negotiability and indeterminacy. Custom is prone to reinvention as resource claimants manipulate customary references across multiple forums for property legitimation and authority. This article focuses on the resilience of customary property relations in East Timor. Based on a study of customary authority in the village of Babulo, we conclude that traditional Timorese narratives of first possession, where land authority is claimed by groups that trace descent to a mythic first settler, have acted as adaptive and resilient focal points for the reproduction of customary property relations in historical circumstances of war, colonization, and occupation. While a finding of customary resilience is not new to postcolonial contexts, the relative novelty of our study lies in its structured explanation for resilience in circumstances of war and displacement, based on the social ordering capacity of first possession principles themselves. This explanation, which derives from focal point theories for cooperative property relations, also takes into account a number of limits on the ordering capacity of first possession principles, which support a conclusion of relative or constrained resilience, particularly in terms of contested interpretations of possessory authority in contemporary East Timor.Fr om 1974 to 1999, at least 102,800, and as many as 183,000, East Timorese died from conflict-related causes. These deaths represented between 15 and 25 percent of East Timor's then population, a mortality rate equivalent to the killing fields of Cambodia (CAVR 2005:44). Most deaths took place during the period of Indonesian occupation from 1975 to 1999. Many resulted from forced relocations by the Indonesian military, an ill-fated attempt to separate civilians from the armed resistance. Others were due to killings by the Indonesian military and its proxies, pro-Indonesian

Land access and livelihoods in post-conflict Timor-Leste: no magic bullets

“…In each we outline the particularities of the communities, and how land tenure decisions and livelihoods are locally manifested within the context of the Timorese commons. The reason to discuss livelihoods as well as land access is because they are mutually interdependent (see Grenfell et al 2008;Fitzpatrick and Barnes 2010;Fitzpatrick et al 2012;Thu 2012). …”

“…Land scarcity, regarded by some analysts as a key driver of the eventual formalisation of land rights, is becoming a pressing issue in and around towns and cities but is not widespread across the country (Fitzpatrick and Barnes 2010). Land pressures are more visible, and this was observed during the appropriation of land for conservation, potential agribusiness and industrial development projects in the late 2000s (Cullen 2012;Palmer 2015).…”

“…There are regional differences in "operational rules" (Ostrom 1990, 51-52); inter-generational transfer mechanisms for symbolic and material resources, matrilineal and patrilineal systems, socially defined rights and obligations relating to land, and in the terminology used to describe local relations (Fitzpatrick and Barnes 2010). Nonetheless, these different local cultural systems have much in common historically, as comparative ethnology of Austronesian land tenure shows (Fox 1997;Reuter 2006).…”

Land and Life in Timor-Leste: Ethnographic Essays

“…Underpinning the social and spatial relations invoked by rituals of restoration and renewal are distinct principles and practices that have displayed considerable adaptive capacity and resilience in the face of historical processes of encompassment such as Portuguese colonialism and the Indonesian military occupation (Babo-Soares 2004;Fitzpatrick and Barnes 2010;Fitzpatrick et al 2008;Hohe 2002;Traube 2007). Key amongst these principles are those relating to 'origins' and 'precedence' (Fitzpatrick and Barnes 2010;Fitzpatrick et al 2008;Hohe 2002;Molnar, this volume;Traube 2007).…”

“…The time, effort and resources entailed in these rituals of return and renewal suggest that such actions are more than a simple reaffirmation of self-esteem following centuries of foreign domination. They involve the rearticulation of distinct forms of sociality structured around networks of kinship and alliance, closely tied to specific claims to land and access to natural resources Fitzpatrick and Barnes 2010;McWilliam 2006Palmer 2007). …”