My principal intention here is to show how space and time indexed social
identity in the marketplace of one of the larger ‘towns’ of Timor-Leste (or ‘East
Timor’), Viqueque,1
during the years 1966-1967 and to examine their relevance
for the social personality and economic character of Viqueque town today. The
space occupied by the weekly emporium offered a forum in which ethnicity,
social hierarchy, gender, a pastime (cockfighting), and religious affiliation visually
played themselves out and presented a physical replication of social distinctions
that defined the character of the town and the sub-district it served.
The marketplace (basar) also provided space enabling persons of different social
identity to interact more readily and regularly there than anywhere else.2
The
temporal dimensions of life alternately waxed and waned as six days of relative
somnolence were interrupted by a day of excitement filled with commerce,
gossip, cockfighting, and – in the case of the few Christians in the locality – celebrating
the weekly Mass.3
As was true for other towns in the former Portuguese colony, Viqueque’s market contributed substantially to its social life and
economy, yet oddly enough, although markets are among the most ubiquitous
and prominent institutions in Timor-Leste, so far as I am aware no detailed account
has ever been published about one.4
A subsidiary intent of the present
account, accordingly, is to help rectify this ethnographic omission.5
A secondary purpose motivates this study. In evaluating the respective
merits of the ‘Polanyi School’ of economic anthropology (Polanyi 1957),
whose adherents regarded theories derived from the discipline of economics
as inapplicable to primitive and peasant societies, and the ‘Formalist School’
(Cook 1966), which asserted their relevance, Raymond Firth (1972:468)
roundly declared the dispute to be ‘largely futile’. The issue, he argued, was
not ‘whether economic theory could be applied to primitive economics’ but
‘where, how far, and with what modifications and additions, economic theory
could be found appropriate to interpret “primitive” systems’. In demonstrating
how economic values, such as rational calculation, scarcity, and demand,
are ‘embedded’ – as George Dalton (1971), the foremost of Polanyi’s followers
might put it – in non-economic aspects of communal existence, this study
seeks to support Firth’s argument.
Focusing on gender, ethnicity, social class, and social identity, and their
economic implications, also enables us to gain insight into the process whereby
post-colonial nations transform themselves after gaining independence. By
comparing the use made of social space at two periods of time separated by
four decades during which momentous developments took place in TimorLeste
we can see in sharper relief the kind of changes urban spaces experience
when they are subject to colonial authority, pressures resulting from independence,
and – ultimately – the tortuous process of nation-building.