Economic Diversity in Contemporary Timor-Leste

• Other Authors: Silva, Kelly (Editor), Palmer, Lisa (Editor), Cunha, Teresa (Editor)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Leiden Leiden University Press 2023
• Subjects: Political economy; Society & culture: general; East Timor; Diverse economies; Economic interdependencies; Timor-Leste; History; Culture
• Online Access: DOAB: download the publication; DOAB: description of the publication

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.