Journeys to Knua: displacement,return and translocality in Timor-Leste

ABSTRACT

Return journeys to ancestral lands are a central dimension that underscores contemporary ideas of origin, identity, kinship, custom, health and prosperity for the East Timorese. The material and social reproduction of knua – both in the sense of the ancestral territory and associated kin-based ritual community – is heavily reliant on ongoing place-based and translocal customary reciprocal exchanges. Based on multi-sited fieldwork, this article examines the return journeys to Lesuai, an ancestral settlement in the remote central southern highlands of Timor-Leste, which was abandoned during the Indonesian invasion and restored in the later years of occupation. Lesuai community believes the spirit realm exerts an overwhelming influence over their general well-being, compelling ‘house’ members to renew their connection with knua to maintain family ties and benefit from ancestral protection. Closer ethnographic attention reveals how the motivations, experiences and understandings of ‘return’ to origin places are highly personal, gendered and generational. Broadly, these return mobilities demonstrate the agency, adaptability and resilience of conflict-affected populations. Through prolonged displacement and resettlement, dispersed knua members have created new livelihoods, subjectivities and attachments across multiple places, which are reconfiguring family ties, connections to ancestral places, and how ritual obligations are fulfilled.     

Historic and Contemporary Influences on HIV Advocacy in Vietnam

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - HIV civil society advocacy in Vietnam is shaped by a unique fusion of historic and contemporary influences,...     

A Bayesian approach for parameter estimation in multi-stage models

Multi-stage time evolving models are common statistical models for biological systems, especially insect populations. In stage-duration distribution models, parameter estimation for the models use the Laplace transform method. This method involves assumptions such as known constant shapes, known constant rates or the same overall hazard rate for all stages. These assumptions are strong and restrictive. The main aim of this paper is to weaken these assumptions by using a Bayesian approach. In particular, a Metropolis-Hastings algorithm based on deterministic transformations is used to estimate parameters. We will use two models, one which has no hazard rates, and the other has stage-wise constant hazard rates. These methods are validated in simulation studies followed by a case study of cattle parasites. The results show that the proposed methods are able to estimate the parameters comparably well, as opposed to using the Laplace transform methods.