{"product_id":"the-land-of-gold-9780877277972","title":"The Land of Gold","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the village of Funar, located in the central highlands of Timor-Leste, the disturbing events of the twenty-four-year-long Indonesian occupation are rarely articulated in narratives of suffering. Instead, the highlanders emphasize the significance of their return to the sacred land of the ancestors, a place where gold is abundant and life is thought to originate. On one hand, this collective amnesia is due to villagers'' exclusion from contemporary nation-building processes, which bestow recognition only on those who actively participated in the resistance struggle against Indonesia. On the other hand, the cultural revival and the privileging of the ancestral landscape and traditions over narratives of suffering derive from a particular understanding of how human subjects are constituted. Before life and after death, humans and the land are composed of the same substance; only during life are they separated. To recover from the forced dislocation the highlanders experienced under \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The Land of Gold is an ethnography of postconflict life in East Timor that is at once lyrical and devastating. By tracing how diverse relationships to the land—loss, reclamation, and reimagination—shape and are shaped by survivors, Judith Bovensiepen offers a new understanding of the long years of war that captures both the personal and the political.\" -- Tyrell Haberkorm, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific\u003cbr\u003e\"In The Land of Gold, Judith Bovensiepen brings a much needed ethnographic perspective to the study of social life in rural, postoccupation Timor-Leste. Villagers who returned to their ancestral origin place after a lengthy period of forced displacement had to reestablish social relations and restore their connections with the spiritual powers of the land. Bovensiepen demonstrates that the ritual processes in which these two imperatives were entangled were fraught with conflicts, tensions, and dilemmas. She argues persuasively that ritual performances brought the traumatic past into the present. As an analysis of how historical experience of political violence both shapes and is shaped by local cultural forms, the book has relevance beyond the region and beyond anthropology.\" -- Elizabeth G. Traube, Wesleyan University\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MB - Cornell University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50577718804823,"sku":"9780877277972","price":97.2,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780877277972.jpg?v=1746096354","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/the-land-of-gold-9780877277972","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}