Homeland,territory, property: Contesting land,state, and nation in urban Timor-Leste |
| |
Institution: | 1. Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Kochi University, Akebono-cho, Kochi 780-8520, Japan;2. Department of Applied Chemistry, Changzhou University, Changzhou, Jiangsu 213164, China;1. School of Geography and Planning, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales CF10?3WA, UK;2. Instituto de Investigaciones “Dr. José María Luis Mora”, Plaza Valentín Gómez Farías 12, San Juan Mixcoac, Distrito Federal C.P. 03730, Mexico |
| |
Abstract: | This article considers contestations over land, state and nation in Aitarak Laran, an urban settlement in post-independence Timor-Leste. Since 2010 the settlement has been resisting eviction by the East Timorese state, which wishes to use the land it occupies to build a National Library and Cultural Centre. In exploring the contestation, the purpose of this article is two-fold. Firstly, it explores the nature of social connection to land within postcolonial state- and nation-building. Here, the contestation at Aitarak Laran reveals counter-posed imaginings of land as homeland, territory and property. Secondly, the article draws out the implications of these counter-posed imaginings for thinking about the ‘right to the city’, a notion first theorised by Lefebvre (1996 1968]) and subsequently developed to encompass a range of modes of urban protest. In the settlement, the promises of independence—unity, equivalence, and inclusion within the sovereign nation-state—are at odds with residents' experiences of what independence has in fact brought. Land, in its multiple imaginings, becomes a crucible upon which this painful disjuncture plays out. Reading Aitarak Laran as an instance of ‘right to the city’ struggle, these tensions emerge as well not only in practice but also in theory, reflected particularly in the limitations and ambiguities of rights discourse. |
| |
Keywords: | Timor-Leste Land Nation-building State-building Squatter settlement Right to the city |
本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录! |
|