Can Oil Speak? On the Production of Ontological Difference and Ambivalence in Extractive Encounters

Two disparate views emerge as rural people living along Timor-Leste's south coast are confronted by extractive industries charged with implementing a large oil infrastructure project: emphasis is put either on the productive potential of non-human environment or spiritual connections particular sites. While political ontology approaches posit that resource conflicts reveal underlying ontological differences between animism and naturalism, this article shows how in fact produced encounters. Resource extraction promotes articulation clear-cut positions, thereby displacing more ambivalent relations inhabited environment. The multiplicity East Timorese origin accounts challenges analytical prioritization difference provides model for attending to multivocality, ambiguity, context.