East Timor, also known as Timor-Leste, comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, located at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago. East Timor was among the last of colonial territories to become independent, and it actually had to be liberated twice. First, after more than four centuries of Portuguese colonial rule, it achieved independence in 1975 only to be invaded and occupied by Indonesia. After a blood-soaked occupation of 24 years and following intense international pressure, the Jakarta-regime only grudgingly allowed East Timor to form a nation of its own in 1999. Since then, the new state has faced further armed clashes and is only now able to seriously engage in nation-building. Historical Dictionary of East Timor relates the turbulent history of this country through a chronology, an introductory essay, an expansive bibliography, and over 200 cross-referenced dictionary entries on significant persons, events, places, organizations, and other aspects of East Timor history from the earliest times to the present.

Public Law in East Asia is a collection of the leading English-language articles on constitutional and administrative law in the Asian region, written by many of the leading scholars from this area. The region has its own distinct legal and political traditions, and its systems of government have facilitated dynamic economic growth, but the role of public law has not been well understood. Covering a wide range of jurisdictions in a single volume, this collection provides insights into the ways in which institutions of Western origin have been integrated into Asian political and legal cultures, producing new syntheses.

This book explores how national identity has been negotiated and (re)imagined through the political symbols that embody it in post-conflict Timor-Leste. It develops a Modernist approach to nations and nationalism by incorporating Bourdieusian theories of symbolic capital and conflict, to examine how national identity has been constructed and represented in political symbols. Taking case studies of flags, monuments, national heroes, and street art, it critically analyses how a diverse population has interpreted and (re)constructed its national identity throughout the first decade of independence, and how the transition from a context of conflict to peace has influenced such popular imaginings. By examining these processes of identification with a wide range of symbols, the book discusses the numerous challenges that this young nation-state still faces, including victimhood and recognition, democratization and electoral politics, the political role of cosmology and spirituality, and post-colonial generational differences and divisions.

Table of contents

Joining the U.S.’ war effort in 1942, Mexican President Manuel Ávila Camacho ordered the dislocation of Japanese Mexican communities and approved the creation of internment camps and zones of confinement. Under this relocation program, a new pro-American nationalism developed in Mexico that scripted Japanese Mexicans as an internal racial enemy. In spite of the broad resistance presented by the communities wherein they were valued members, Japanese Mexicans lost their freedom, property, and lives. In Uprooting Community, Selfa A. Chew examines the lived experience of Japanese Mexicans in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands during World War II. Studying the collaboration of Latin American nation-states with the U.S. government, Chew illuminates the efforts to detain, deport, and confine Japanese residents and Japanese-descent citizens of Latin American countries during World War II. These narratives challenge the notion that Japanese Mexicans enjoyed the protection of the Mexican government during the war and refute the mistaken idea that Japanese immigrants and their descendants were not subjected to internment in Mexico during this period. Through her research, Chew provides evidence that, despite the principles of racial democracy espoused by the Mexican elite, Japanese Mexicans were in fact victims of racial prejudice bolstered by the political alliances between the United States and Mexico. The treatment of the ethnic Japanese in Mexico was even harsher than what Japanese immigrants and their children in the United States endured during the war, according to Chew. She argues that the number of persons affected during World War II extended beyond the first-generation Japanese immigrants “handled” by the Mexican government during this period, noting instead that the entire multiethnic social fabric of the borderlands was reconfigured by the absence of Japanese Mexicans.

A dynamic new labor movement emerged in Indonesia in the 1990s, helping to bring down the brutal Suharto dictatorship in 1998. Through rare personal interviews with the activists who are leading the rebirth of struggle for democratic rights in the world's fourth-largest country, La Botz draws valuable lessons for workers in the United States seeking to build international labor solidarity.