A vida social das casas sagradas no Timor-Leste pós-colonial

This book aims at understanding the ways of reproducing and transforming the social life of uma lulik (sacred houses) in postcolonial Timor-Leste based on the transits and transactions between people, places and institutions. The fieldwork that supported this study was carried out from September 2016 to December 2017. The reproduction of the sacred houses is analyzed in light of ritual ceremonies, which allow the relations to be actualized and strengthen people’s ties to their home group and the sacred houses. The transformations involve two types of events. The first one concerns the motivations that mobilize people who live in Dili and seek the services of their sacred houses and their ritual officers outside of a ceremony schedule. The second one refers to the appropriation, transposition and spectacularization of elements of the local governance complexes, called kultura, into the management context of the East Timor state based in Dili. Thus, it is stated that the social life of sacred houses has been reproduced and transformed through an ordinary and extraordinary agenda of rituals. On the one hand, the parts of the Houses are called upon to engage in their continuous reproduction through active participation in reopening ceremonies of the sacred houses, sau batar, weddings, and funeral rituals. Roughly speaking, these are called the kultura ceremonies. On the other hand, the Houses and non-human entities that belong to them are mobilized to guarantee the success of their members’ journeys in Euro-Western institutions. The transformations of the sacred houses are also related to the way the State of Timor-Leste state exploits certain dimensions of its configuration – specially its aesthetic dimension – as an element of national identity and incorporates the typical ritual authorities of the house – the lia-na’in – as a form of social organization in ritual actions of the state itself. The data presented in the book also reveal an important monetization of gift exchange in kultura ceremonies.