By adopting a spatial approach to analysis, this article examines the significance of death in Timor-Leste and its relationship to security and peace. The main argument is that a person’s security in Timor-Leste is very often made possible via the sustaining of what is referred to here as ‘cognate communities’ which comprise both the living and the spirits of the ancestral dead. Grave-making as a form of ‘emplaced security’ – an expression of agency which results in the creation or transformation of a place in order to mitigate threat – enables a particular kind of space whereby the living as part of cognate communities are able to venerate their dead. In turn, engagement with the ‘spatial turn’ demonstrates how this form of emplaced security is not static, but rather is dynamic and adaptive as communities formed through custom constantly interact with broader social changes and spatial transformations. Even as grave-making represents a micro-form of emplacement, such acts both produce and respond to different spatial orders, including more abstract forms bound up with nation formation. As such, the ‘spatial turn’ shows how burial represents both an intimate and petite act of place-making while also intersecting with different spatial orders and scales that interact with meta-narratives including religion, modernisation and nationalism.

通过采用空间方法进行分析，本文考察了东帝汶死亡的重要性及其与安全与和平的关系。主要论点是，东帝汶的人身安全常常是通过维持这里所谓的“同族社区”来实现的，“同族社区”既包括祖先死者的生灵，又包括他们的灵魂。坟墓制作是“安置的安全”的一种形式，即一种代理的表达，它导致一个地方的创建或改造以减轻威胁，它实现了一种特殊的空间，使作为同源社区一部分的人们能够尊敬他们死了。反过来，与“空间转向”的互动说明了这种形式的安全部署不是一成不变的，但是相反，它是动态的和自适应的，因为通过习俗形成的社区不断与更广泛的社会变化和空间转变互动。即使造墓代表着进驻的微观形式，但这种行为既产生并响应了不同的空间秩序，包括与民族形成联系在一起的更抽象的形式。这样，“空间转向”表明了埋葬如何既代表着私密而微不足道的场所营造，又与不同的空间秩序和尺度相交，而这些空间秩序和尺度又与包括宗教，现代化和民族主义在内的元叙事相互作用。