Lauter, Paul (2020), Our Sixties: An Activist’s History

a compilation of different stories that explore a common theme: the complex relation between the meto (the indigenous/familiar) and the kase (foreign) modes of life in the enclave of Oecussi, Timor -Leste.


RECENSÕES
O tratamento das temáticas político--institucionais deverá, na medida do possível, passar por algum foco comparativo, sob pena de a riqueza contextual dos trabalhos enfermar do reducionismo paroquialista ou do afunilamento explicativo. As influências estruturais que tocam hoje na vida organizacional de cada nação, comunidade ou território merecerão, pois, ser esboçadas, em nada isto obstaculizando ao conhecimento profundo do terreno empírico em causa. Seguidamente, sabe -se como os objetos e noções dos estudos socioinstitucionais têm uma maior ou menor carga simbólico--ideológica. Trata -se do seu substrato normativo, ou político, suscetível de reações automáticas, pela associação a projetos de sociedade valorativamente distintos. Falar de democracia, participação, coesão social e identidades presta -se a esses automatismos, por regra alheios aos modos de existência real das matérias tratadas, na sua variabilidade concreta. Em sentido inverso, o evitamento destes obstáculos passa muitas vezes por trabalhos de pendor descritivo, de um comparativismo suave e generalizante, cuja repugnância pelo contributo filosófico, ético ou político exprimirá tão só uma consciência analítica indiferente ao curso das matérias, ou problemas, a cujo destino deveriam ajudar. to understand the civil rights movements in the US in the 1960s and the connected struggles against inequality, discrimination, segregation, oppression, racism, poverty, sexism -and war. As the author points out in the first chapter, though the word was never mentioned at the time (and is still largely scary today in the US), these were clearly socialist movements. With a Yale PhD in his luggage (1958) and before he went on to pursue a brilliant career in academia, Lauter was a passionate activist for social justice. He traveled all over the country, helping develop peace education programs, teaching in the 1964 Mississippi freedom schools, heading the first community school (in Washington, D.C.), supporting draft opposition, resisting the war in Vietnam, and co -founding the Feminist Press. Our Sixties suggests that following the "success" in 2016 of Trump's self -serving "revolution" -act--now -for -America -first -the US urgently needs a 60's style progressive reinvention. The stunning cover of Our Sixties reproduces the well -known Warren K. Leffler's photograph of the civil rights march on Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. The event, also known as March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, brought together 250,000 Americans. At the march, Martin Luther King, Jr., the final speaker, delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
It was the perfect finale for an event intended to denounce racism, segregation and discrimination and to champion for the civic and economic rights of African Americans. I see this cover image as the perfect reflection of Lauter's lifelong devotion to inclusive, democratic ideals and principles. He has recently stated that he "first encountered Black Lives Matter in 1964 in Mississippi". How could that be if Black Lives Matter didn't start until 2013? "As an organization", Lauter corrects, and he continues, "the issues addressed in the BLM movement have energized and unsettled black communities for decades". 2 In the 1960s, when it was dangerous to try to help African Americans to get registered to vote -you could actually get killed, and many did -Paul Lauter was there. He went as a teacher only to find himself learning from his underprivileged Black and Latino and Latina students about American injustice. By 1969, as the author tells us in chapter nine, after more than a decade of activism and political interventionist writing (listed at the end of Selected Bibliography, on pages 266 -267), he decided to go back to academia. "I was weary", he confesses. And he needed a regular income to support his children (p. 154). But perhaps the more conservative turn after Nixon's election the previous year helped as well.
The title of chapter nine couldn't be more fitting: "A New University?". The question mark testifies to Lauter's modesty. From the 1980s on, particularly after he joined Trinity College, Hartford, in 1988, he led an effort to revolutionize higher education in the humanities and social sciences.
With a team of colleagues from around the country and overseas, he worked to expand the canon making English and American Studies theory, research, and pedagogy change completely. Even if not without controversy, English and American literature and culture syllabi in university departments could not but change as well.
In the meantime, as Our Sixties makes clear, Lauter was writing, co -writing, editing, and co -editing some of the most important and influential books in the field. The one having most impact still today is arguably The Heath Anthology of American Literature (1994) A fine scholar, a committed teacher, and a concerned educator, Lauter never stopped being an activist. Once at Trinity, he set up an archive on the struggles of the American sixties and "began to work on this book, Our Sixties" (p. 217). The book makes things easier for whoever wants to know more about American culture and the ruthless affairs of the world in general, in order better to question them.

Maria Irene Ramalho
Edited by Alina Timóteo

Rose, Michael (2020), Indigenous Spirits and Global Aspirations in a Southeast Asian Borderland. Timor -Leste's Oecussi Enclave. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 232 pp.*
This book is a compilation of different stories that explore a common theme: the complex relation between the meto (the indigenous/familiar) and the kase (foreign) modes of life in the enclave of Oecussi, Timor -Leste. Written by anthropologist Michael Rose, the book draws on the author's experience in the region initially as a United Nations (UN) advisor and later on as a researcher.
The meto/kase relationship is discussed in the context of different dynamics at play in the highlands and lowlands of Oecussi and how they interact with each other. In Rose's words, "the practice of life in Oecussi is something that emerges from the contingencies of this "crossing", from movement between a highland space where meto matters and revolves around ritual/family/ /duty/agriculture that are imperative, and a lowland domain where money and outwardly orientated aspirations have become dominant in day -to -day life" (p. 36). In practice, kase and meto constantly connect and what often appears to be the dominance of the kase world actually reflects a more complex process, where kase is "enabled by the support of ever -present but typically invisible meto" (ibidem). It is this crossing and mobility process, and how it affects identity, that is at the heart of this study. Theoretically, the analysis is influenced by three complementary approaches discussed in chapter one: theories of encounter, theories of change, and theories of experience. The work of James Scott is taken as a starting point to understand different forms of resistance to exogenous forms of governance and is complemented by theories of change and experience as Rose is interested not only in these interactions per se, but in how they evolve over time. The six chapters that follow dive deep into the experiences of local actors that navigate through the meto/kase realms while considering these three elements. Chapters two and three recount stories from 2011 and 2012, when the author was first in Oecussi as a young UN adviser to the Timorese government in a program devised to create employment and improve labour conditions in the district. As he recalls, the problems encountered were too complex to be reported in standard bureaucratic forms. They represented deep ontological tensions that local actors had to deal with, and which had bodily consequences that often resulted in misfortune, sickness and even death. This tension is exemplified in two different stories. In chapter two, Rose shares the story of a young man from Oecussi who went to study geology in Dili and, facing the tension between traditional beliefs and the new body of scientific knowledge, he actually suffered physical distress and sickness. Chapter three then presents the case of a man who once was a prominent entrepreneur and public servant in Dili and eventually, accused of embezzlement, became a pariah when he went back to his community. highlighting the role of spirits as agents of resistance to "high modernism". Chapter five recounts the work of a local Catholic healer, his collection of sacred stones and the incorporation of kase instruments to explain and validate the efficacy of his work. Chapter six tells the case of a public servant working in the government office charged with protecting the environment, who was also the nephew of a prince in Oecussi -the latter in charge of protecting the forest -, and how the kase and meto logics of these positions often conflicted.
As these functions were based on different sites of legitimacy and different logics, this partly enabled his work by reinforcing his authority in Oecussi, but it also made it complicated as these different positions led to different attitudes related to rule enforcement. Chapter seven juxtaposes two parallel events taking place in the village of Kutete: the reluctance of local farmers to adopt new agricultural methods, and a ritual speech performed in a local school to help students pass the exams and succeed professionally thereafter. While the first case reflects a clear resistance to kase methods, in the second case meto rituals were used to foster prosperity perceived according to kase ideas of success. The rich description of these experiences, accompanied by constant reflexivity by the author, makes this book very engaging and easy to read. Throughout so many different stories, the meto/kase fluid relationship becomes very visible in all its complexity, confirming the argument that the distinction between these modes of life is not clear cut and that it must be understood from the point of view of experience. In Rose's words, "The good things of the outside world are pursued not through rejecting the meto ways of the village, or collapsing them into the kase, but through the ritually mediated and repeated negotiation of travel between them" (p. 227). While much of the discussion is framed within anthropological approaches, this book, which I vividly recommend, is of interest to academics and practitioners from different fields, particularly Development Studies and International Relations, as the relation between meto and kase is exemplar of the limitations of big international projects, not least in the context of international statebuilding, where the ultimate end is to create a new social contract "from scratch" (often ignoring already existing social contracts). The emphasis on experience is of particular importance. Often policy literature presumes a linear logic on how societies function and develop. Conversely, much of the critical academic literature on peacebuilding, also influenced by the work of Scott, often stresses the aspects of local resistance as the primordial element of these global/ /local encounters. In this book, Michael Rose shows how these dynamics are much more fluid and less distinct as it appears at first sight. Resistance to and the embrace of the kase world go hand in hand, and how they interact is in constant motion. The emphasis on experience and narratives further contributes to a broader discussion on the constitution of knowledge. Drawing on postcolonial critique, Rose engages with a crucial question in the conclusion that is "what is deemed valid knowledge?". By trying to unveil local narratives, Rose found that the ways to legitimise knowledge have been changing in the meto realm, as "today fluency in and identification with ways of sense -making that are comprehensible and valued by the outside world have become prestigious and potentially lucrative" (p. 161). How this is affecting Oecussi -and indeed how these processes affect societies more generally -is an important matter worth investigating more thoroughly in future research. Academically, this discussion points to the fundamental need to question and dissect the role of critical academic thinking in interpreting societies. While this has been generally discussed by authors such as Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Linda Smith, this book offers solid empirical evidence of how crucial this task is and how "truths" can differ when comparing those of the person who experiences them and those of whoever analyses these experiences from the outside. Las nuevas tecnologías son consustanciales a nuestra realidad cotidiana. Progresivamente, como el día a día atestigua, un mayor número de trámites deben hacerse electrónicamente. Esta aseveración se ha acelerado, hasta límites inverosímiles hasta hace muy poco, como consecuencia de la pandemia del COVID -19. Nuestros hábitos, en prácticamente todos los sectores, se han visto modificados de manera abrupta. Los últimos acontecimientos suscitados han generado una aceleración de los distintos procesos de automatización de las máquinas, la robótica y la inteligencia artificial. Estas últimas -la Inteligencia Artificial y la robótica-han pasado, en tiempo récord, de amenaza a solución en un mundo poscoronavirus. Muchas compañías han debido implementar las tecnologías de información y comunicación para poder seguir operando. La tecnología y los avances que son inherentes a la misma no deben ser reputados como un fin en sí mismo, sino que deben ser considerados un instrumento facilitador para el cambio, que resulta necesario cuando nos referimos a la digitalización. Las empresas, sobre todo aquellas de índole internacional -y que tienen cierta relevancia-, llevan tiempo preparando la implantación y consolidación de las nuevas tecnologías en sus procesos. Sin embargo, debido al confinamiento que, a nivel mundial, ha generado la crisis del coronavirus, se tuvo que priorizar el teletrabajo, y dar un salto sin precedentes para planificar el futuro a largo plazo. Aunque, en los comienzos, se activó un modo de emergencia, con la finalidad de garantizar el servicio que se venía prestando, meses después tales cambios tecnológicos siguen presentes e incluso van a más. En cualquier caso, todo ello ha puesto de manifiesto que la digitalización es una apuesta sin vuelta atrás que aporta múltiples prerrogativas como, entre otras, flexibilidad, celeridad y eficiencia. Si bien es bastante probable que, a nivel internacional, un importante número de empresas -incluyendo las pequeñas y medianas empresas-deban ajustar sus presupuestos, la inmensa mayoría es, con carácter simultaneo, muy posible que salvaguarden sus inversiones en tecnología digital. La pandemia ha dado lugar a una clara disrupción global de los negocios, poniendo de manifiesto la relevancia de las iniciativas en el ámbito de la transformación digital. Estamos ante una oportunidad, sin precedentes, de concienciar de la necesidad de impulsar la sostenibilidad y el talento digital sin olvidar a los trabajadores menos familiarizados con la digitalización. Por su parte, la Profesora Coll tiene una sólida trayectoria en el ámbito de la comunicación, habiendo también sido directora del Grado de Periodismo y Comunicación Corporativa de la URL. Una de sus líneas de investigación es la comunicación y, en concreto, la transformación digital. Ambos autores están especializados en la tecnología digital. A lo largo de la presente monografía, se pone de manifiesto como, en los últimos meses que hemos vivido, se ha producido lo que los autores denominan "hiperaceleración" que, por cierto, da título a la obra objeto de esta reseña. El libro es el comienzo de una nueva época de colaboración entre los seres humanos y las máquinas. Es, a partir de ahora, cuando asistimos a una revolución sin precedentes y los siguientes fenómenos tienen un valor absolutamente prioritario: la inteligencia artificial, el aprendizaje digital, la realidad virtual, el Internet de las Cosas (Internet of Things en inglés), la robótica, la computación en la nube, el 5G, los pagos digitales, la cadena de bloques -blockchain-, la telemedicina y las videoconferencias -a través de Zoom, Microsoft Teams y Google Meet, entre otras plataformas-, entre otros. A este último respecto, cabe indicar que la telemedicina resulta básica para sortear el colapso en los hospitales y centros de salud, pero también para el diagnóstico y tratamientos frente al coronavirus que en base a los mismos consiguen convertirse en procesos rápidos y sencillos. Como los autores señalan, la irrupción de la pandemia incidió, de manera sensible, en el contenido de la presente obra, pues fueron testigos y también protagonistas de la hiperaceleración, es decir, la intensificación de la revolución digital debido a las cuarentenas y confinamientos implementados a raíz de la pandemia. El COVID--19 es un reto para toda la humanidad y, naturalmente, para la ciencia. Asimismo, como decíamos al comienzo de la presente reseña, las nuevas tecnologías y la digitalización han acelerado su implantación en las empresas y en las tareas cotidianas de las sociedades. El coronavirus ha dinamitado las estructuras de economías avanzadas, modificando patrones de comportamiento decimonónico, generando un cambio disruptivo a nivel global. Con acierto, se advierte que cuando el COVID -19 irrumpió, las sociedades se refugiaron tanto en la tecnología como en la ciencia para poder atenuar los efectos del desastre en ciernes. Inicialmente, gracias a los avances de la ciencia, se pudo tratar, a nivel sanitario, a los afectados por este complejo virus, y, posteriormente, se pudo asegurar la continuidad de las actuaciones profesionales y sociales en virtud de la conexión tecnológica. Asimismo, se hizo uso de software de rastreo para conocer los contactos que las personas tenían con otras. A todo ello coadyuvaron los programas específicos puestos en marcha por los gobiernos, pero también por Google y Apple. Estas últimas lanzaron la plataforma de notificación de exposición, que tiene como finalidad rastrear el coronavirus. En todo caso, para su instalación y procesamiento de los datos es necesario que los usuarios, para respetar las políticas de privacidad, den su consentimiento específico.