Local Governance in Timor-Leste - Secretaria de Estado da Arte e ...

within, I had failed to recognise the reality of power, politics, agency and oppressionwithin local governing arrangements. In short, I had failed to take local politicsseriously.As fieldwork progressed, and as I came to know the communities of Venilale andAinaro better, it became apparent that the story of coexisting institutional structuresand of local governance more generally could not be told in such a depoliticisedmanner. Throughout this thesis I argue that it is through everyday local politics thatthe coexisting institutions of modern and traditional governance are negotiated—structuring how local authority is obtained and maintained, how that authority isexercised and shared, and what impact this complex governance environment has onbroader power relations within the suku. Extending the work of James Tully (1995), Idescribe this as the 'everyday politics of mutual recognition'. I argue that withincontemporary Timorese villages, characterised by a hybridity of modern andtraditional values, understandings and laws, local leaders strategically engage withmodern and traditional governance institutions in order to fill communal needs andpursue individual political agendas. I argue that it is through these everyday politics,rather than in the form and function of institutions themselves, that important insightscan be found into how social arrangements within Timorese communities are shapedin the context of coexisting modern and traditional governance. This may in turnprovide some clues for how a politics of mutual recognition can be developed andembraced within national politics.This evolution from a functional to a critical approach was also driven by a desire totell a second important story, what in this thesis I refer to as the 'shadow side' of thepolitics of mutual recognition. Aspects of this dynamic struck me many timesthroughout my fieldwork as existing inequalities relating to gender and classcontinued to be reproduced through the modern institutions of the state. As theyentered the local political environment, these new institutions were interpreted inways that were concordant with existing power relationships and traditionalinstitutional structures—but they nonetheless retained their quality as 'modern' stateinstitutions, clearly distinguishable from traditional institutions. This dynamic oftenserved to both deepen and legitimate those inequalities. However, taking a functionalapproach to institutionalism failed to provide the conceptual tools to account for this2