The Articulation of Tradition in Timor-Leste

When The Flow of Life was published in 1980, it was intended to identify some of the distinctive features of eastern Indonesia and to shift perspectives on how the region was viewed. In that volume, Timor figured prominently. Six out of 14 comparative essays—seven, if one counts Rote within this area—were focused on Timor. Previous comparative efforts had been limited and were largely confined to the influential study by the Dutch anthropologist F. A. E. van Wouden. His work, Sociale Structuurtypen in de Groote Oost, in 1935—translated as Types of Social Structure in Eastern Indonesia in 1968—was based largely on fragmentary materials reported by travellers, missionaries and government officers. While certainly perceptive in many of its particular analyses, the work advanced a single formal model that purported to provide the original underlying basis for societies in eastern Indonesia.