Sea-Change: Mambai Sensory Practices and Hydrocarbon Exploitation in Timor-Leste

Abstract

This dissertation is a study of the ways that Mambai in southwest Timor-Leste sense and make sense of the socioecological changes in their lived environment. It pays special attention to the ways that sensory practices become fundamental to the lived experience of the Mambai, especially given the sea-change infringing upon them. Whereas prior research on the senses has treated them as secondary to the study of exploitative extractive development, this dissertation bridges phenomenology with sensory studies to argue for the primacy of sensory knowledge to Mambai efforts to overcome the uncertainty wrought by transformations in their socio-ecological relations. Embodied, sensorial experiences—sights, sounds, scents, tastes, and textures—of the lived environment are part of Mambai intangible cultural heritage that shapes how people define and confront extractive megaprojects and their consequences. Since 2011 the coastal town of Betano and its hamlets, inhabited by over 5,500 members of the Mambai cultural group, have been undergoing preparations for a hydrocarbon infrastructure complex along their oceanic location. This complex is known as the Tasi Mane Petroleum Project, an on-shore cluster of power plants and refineries built on and alongside settlements, that supports off-shore hydrocarbon extraction operations. Assisted by the Timor-Leste state’s appropriation of Mambai homestead and agricultural land for its operations, the project has transformed subterranean material into profitable products for the national and private oil companies. Unfettered profit, however, comes at a cost to the current residents. The project has released olfactory, sonic, and metallic pollutants into the atmosphere and ocean, and has challenged Mambai residents’ familiar sensory practices in their place of dwelling, contaminated the marine life that residents depend on for subsistence and income, and threatened their existential security with ongoing land appropriation and displacement from their homes. Combining over three years of ethnographic research with participatory GIS-GPS mapping of pollution, I trace how the Mambai perceive socio-ecological changes and grapple with extractive megaprojects and livelihood diversification. This dissertation argues that the sensorial practices of my interlocutors are fundamental to their efforts to confront megaprojects for hydrocarbon exploitation.