Judith Bovensiepen: The Erasure of Uncertainty in the Making of Timor-Leste's Resource Frontier
| Termin |
Dienstag, 16. Dezember 2025, 16.15 - 17.45 Uhr |
|---|---|
| Veranstaltungsart | Vorlesung/Vortrag |
| Reihe | Anticipating Anthropologies |
| Einrichtung | Philosophische Fakultät I |
| Veranstalter | Seminar für Ethnologie |
| Veranstaltungsort | Seminars für Ethnologie, Seminarraum |
| Straße | Reichardtstraße 11 |
| PLZ/Ort | 06114 Halle (Saale) |
Beschreibung
In Timor-Leste, the development of petroleum infrastructure is reshaping how affected residents relate to the land and the spirit beings that inhabit it. While residents acknowledge the presence of occult powers in the environment, they are often agonistic about their ontological status. Such powers are not defined by inherent qualities but are known through the effects they produce in relation to humans and the environment. Knowledge of them emerges through situated, embodied relationships, where uncertainty is not a problem to be solved, but an integral mode of engagement.
When a large petroleum infrastructure project was implemented along the south coast, some residents began to suspect that oil itself might be animated or inhabited by a spirit - owner. In their interactions with state planners and oil company representatives, residents were increasingly required to articulate clear and convincing claims - to speak with certainty in order to negotiate recognition, compensation, and the best outcomes for their communities. This demand for clarity led to the increasing stabilisation of otherwise uncertain relationships with the spiritual landscape. Relations with a variety of beings that inhabit the landscape, once marked by ambiguity, uncertainty and instability, are being reconfigured through the political and material pressures of resource development. The paper explores how extractive encounters contribute to the closure of ontological instability - erasing uncertainty and fixing boundaries between humans and non - humans, and between animist and naturalist orientations.
Judith Bovensiepen is the Director of the Institute for Social Anthropology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Honorary Professor at the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna. Her research focusses on island Southeast Asia, specifically Timor-Leste, where she has been carrying out ethnographic research since 2005.