ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book offers a simplified image of the cohabitation between customary practices and modern social and cultural agendas. Timor-Leste's future remains in dispute, engaging far wider competition than expressed in the electoral field of the liberal state's democratic institutions. The book elucidates both the power and the limits of origin discourse in Timor-Leste today using the concept of cohabitations, and the entanglements generated by the superimposition of different times in the present. It analyses the reassertion of ritual authority based on extensive fieldwork conducted over recent years in the region of Uato-Lari, focusing on the role of rai nain or rea netana, the "lords of the land". The book examines community leaders' more recent reflections on the operation of the 2009 revised Konsellu suku law, the Pakote system, evolving relationships with District Administrators, and national political parties.
