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Accepted Paper:

Enlivening development: Water management in the post-conflict city of Baucau, Timor Leste  
Lisa Palmer (University of Melbourne)

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how the 'development enterprise' in Timor Leste is (mis)recognizing the potential of existing governance of local customary institutions in relation to water supply and management.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores how the state and others involved in the 'development enterprise' in Timor Leste are (mis)recognizing the potential of the existing governance and exchange capacities of local customary institutions and practices in relation to water supply and management. Examining the problematic of water supply in a post-conflict city, it ponders how these customary institutions might be better supported to extend their range of political and economic credibility and contribute to a reconfiguration of dominant community-managed water supply agreements. The paper draws on the political and economic theory developed by Gibson-Graham (2006) and draws out in a particular place based instance the workings of a diverse economy where a customary economy is enmeshed with, and to some extent undermining, a weak capitalist sector. The paper argues that a failure to address issues of resource ownership and control and to engage the strengths and import of local customary institutions will have serious ramifications for the successful implementation of Timor Leste's national development objectives in the city of Baucau and elsewhere in Timor Leste. As such the paper also seeks to critique approaches to a customary recognition space which are based on a rural/urban divide—the customary economy admitted to some extent in the former but elided in the latter. Instead it argues for an enlivened development approach wherein locally socialised landscapes are recognised as key political sites with which 'development' can engage and power relations can shift.

Panel P36
Owning water: elusive forms and alternate appropriations
  Session 1