‘Development’, resistance and the geographies of affect in Oecussi: Timor-Leste's Special Economic Zone (ZEESM)

Abstract

In 2013, it was announced that Timor-Leste's Oecussi enclave would become the site of a special economic zone. Arid, and inhabited mostly by semi-subsistence farmers from West Timor's Meto ethno-linguistic group, the plan entails remaking the enclave as an industrial, transport and tourism hub. To facilitate this, in mid-2015 the authorities began the process of clearing hundreds of indigenous gardens and homes from land slated for mega-projects intended to make the region attractive to foreign investors. In this paper, I describe how, for many Meto, land tends to be experienced as a spiritually mediated ‘geography of affect’ (Lea & Woodward, 2010) in which questions of place, belonging, spirituality and personal fortune cannot easily be divided, a reality that raises questions about the suitability of the plan's vision of globalized and investment driven ‘development’. Drawing on Scott, I argue that in Oecussi, spirits associated with the land are not apolitical, but are sometimes perceived as acting to protect locals against powerful outsiders – a characteristically Meto ‘weapon of the weak’ that is in keeping with their previous encounters with colonial regimes.