ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to interpret Hopi structures, concepts and practices of "power" within their associated cultural contexts. It argues that the reason for the differing and confusing views of Hopi ethnography lies in the radical disjunction of Western conceptual domains which tend to underpin anthropological thought. The chapter suggests that these anthropological preconceptions impede the understanding of cultural systems which do not manifest parallel epistemological divisions, but which still embody systems of social inequality and entrenched concepts and practices through which these are realised. "Religious" power, on the other hand, concerns conceptions and experience of the numinous—power as an immanent mystical entity, inaccessible to direct analysis. The primary source of power in Hopi society lies in esoteric ritual knowledge. In sum, in Hopi society socially valued knowledge serves to demarcate statuses of distinction and an authority concomitant with the degree of secrecy. Secret ritual knowledge both configures the structuring of hierarchy and provides the idiom of political action.
