Douglas Kammen – författare

One of the most troubling but least studied features of mass political violence is why violence often recurs in the same place over long periods of time.  Douglas Kammen explores this pattern in Three Centuries of Conflict in East Timor, studying that region’s tragic past, focusing on the small district of Maubara.    Once a small but powerful kingdom embedded in long-distance networks of trade, over the course of three centuries the people of Maubara experienced benevolent but precarious Dutch suzerainty, Portuguese colonialism punctuated by multiple uprisings and destructive campaigns of pacification, Japanese military rule, and years of brutal Indonesian occupation. In 1999 Maubara was the site of particularly severe violence before and after the UN-sponsored referendum that finally led to the restoration of East Timor’s independence. Beginning with the mystery of paired murders during East Timor’s failed decolonization in 1975 and the final flurry of state-sponsored violence in 1999, Kammen combines an archival trail and rich oral interviews to reconstruct the history of the leading families of Maubara from 1712 until 2012.    Kammen illuminates how recurrent episodes of mass violence shaped alliances and enmities within Maubara as well as with supra-local actors, and how those legacies have influenced efforts to address human rights violations, post-conflict reconstruction, and the relationship between local experience and the identification with the East Timorese nation. The questions posed in Three Centuries of Conflict in East Timor about recurring violence and local narratives apply to many other places besides East Timor-from the Caucasus to central Africa, and from the Balkans to China-where mass violence keeps recurring.Download open access ebook here.

This Element explores the primary modes by which rulers have exercised power and shaped political relations in Timor-Leste across four distinct periods. The contrast between coercion under colonial rule and consent expressed through the 1999 referendum on independence exerted a powerful influence on scholarship on Timor-Leste's politics and future. Since the restoration of independence in 2002, however, politics in Timor-Leste are best understood in terms of powerful economic constraints during the first Fretilin government (2002-6), and thereafter, thanks to revenue from the country's petroleum reserves, a ruling strategy based on a wide range of inducements (rather than genuine consent).

Exposed tells the story of the orchestrated mass violence of 1965–1968 in Indonesia and its aftermath. By highlighting visual imagery, Geoffrey Robinson and Douglas Kammen fill a void in existing accounts, challenge distorted official narratives, and establish a basis on which new social memories and interpretations might be formed. Following an alleged coup attempt on October 1, 1965, at least half a million members of the legal Communist Party of Indonesia and other leftist organizations were killed and another million or so were detained and held for long periods without charge or trial. The consequences of these events were far-reaching and marked a crucial turning point in the Cold War. In less than a year, the largest non-governing Communist party in the world was crushed, and the country's popular left-nationalist President Sukarno was swept aside, signaling the start of more than three decades of military-backed authoritarian rule. Exposed is the first-ever visual history of these important, but long-obscured, events.