Negotiating ‘darkness’ and ‘light’: Meshworks of fluidity and fire in Baucau

While Timor-Leste’s cosmologies and western philosophy may seem worlds apart, in this chapter I draw on the work of Karen Barad (2003), Tim Ingold (2011, 2015) and Marilyn Strathern (1996) to explore approaches to the materiality of different ‘resources’ in Timor-Leste. By interrogating particular cosmological understandings of water, stone and metal, my aim is to shed light on locally differential attitudes towards modernist development practices – in this case, a cement mine and factory. My argument unfolds by triangulating a discussion of cosmology, landscape and ancestral relations to make connections with, and build a narrative account of, a number of ritual prescriptions and proscriptions involving metals. In this discussion, I focus on the movement and flows of relations that are associated with, and are potentially cut off by, various agencies entangled with metallurgical matter. I ask what all this means for the authorisation of the ongoing activities involved in the creation and use of metals and other hardened objects. By the chapter’s end, I draw