Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of images
- Map
- A Note On Language
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Frontiers Imagined, Frontiers Observed
- 2 Body and Belief in Timor-Leste
- 3 The Ruin and Return of Markus Sulu
- 4 Angry Spirits in the Special Economic Zone
- 5 Stones, Saints and the ‘Sacred Family’
- 6 Meto Kingship and Environmental Governance
- 7 Ritual Speech and Education in Kutete
- Concluding Thoughts: Encounter, Change, Experience
- Selected Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
3 - The Ruin and Return of Markus Sulu
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of images
- Map
- A Note On Language
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Frontiers Imagined, Frontiers Observed
- 2 Body and Belief in Timor-Leste
- 3 The Ruin and Return of Markus Sulu
- 4 Angry Spirits in the Special Economic Zone
- 5 Stones, Saints and the ‘Sacred Family’
- 6 Meto Kingship and Environmental Governance
- 7 Ritual Speech and Education in Kutete
- Concluding Thoughts: Encounter, Change, Experience
- Selected Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
Summary
Abstract
Parting from Jake in Dili, I arrive in Oecussi and quickly become reacquainted with an old friend from the time I spent there with the UN, Markus. Once a prominent entrepreneur and public servant who relished the ‘opportunities’ that came with his position he was now a pariah, having been accused of embezzling thousands of dollars from his office. While his family outwardly accepted Markus's fall was a result of a conspiracy by mendacious rivals, he was also known for trampling traditions, taboos, and hierarchies in pursuit of wealth, and some privately suggested that his misfortune might be spiritual retribution. Through this sometimesdramatic story I explore how, for some at least, meto frameworks are used to understand success and failure in the kase world.
Keywords: corruption, governance, United Nations, international development
Commenting on what insights anthropology might be able to offer scholars of international relations and political science, James Ferguson had this to say:
You look at, say, a country in Africa and all you’re able to see is a series of lacks – of things that should be there but aren’t. And you end up constructing huge parts of the world as just sort of empty spaces where things ought to be there but aren’t. And it leads to a kind of impoverished understanding, I think, because you don't really understand what is going on here. How do people conduct their affairs? How is legitimate authority exercised? How are rules made and enforced? You know, all the kinds of questions that ought to be the starting place tend to disappear or recede into the background (cited in Schouten, 2009).
For outside observers, the grim truth is that in many ways Timor-Leste is still very much defined by what it lacks. A report by Monash University's Centre for Development Economics and Sustainability (Cornwall, Inder and Datt, 2015) has 68 per cent of the population living in poverty. In 2016 the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) found that a full half of the population under five years old are stunted due to malnutrition, the highest rate among the world's worst except for Burundi.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Indigenous Spirits and Global Aspirations in a Southeast Asian BorderlandTimor-Leste's Oecussi Enclave, pp. 91 - 116Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020