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A review by paulcowdell
The Book of the Hopi by Frank Waters
3.0
An often fascinating book, but its chaotic arrangement betrays its underlying problems. Waters argues that previous studies of Hopi religion had been written from a hostile rationalist position: I can't argue for the trajectories of American anthropology, but there's no need for an author to accept a belief system as true for them to represent its truth to its practitioners seriously and sympathetically.
Waters is careful to begin with the most universalised view of Hopi belief practice, through sections that are littered with promises that the material under discussion will finally be explained properly at a later point in the text. The religious universalising goes too far, to the point where Waters is all but arguing identity with far eastern religious practices he'd introduced as analogies (while simultaneously downplaying actual historical assessments of the other potential influences). However, when we reach the useful final historical section, it becomes clear that even his proposed universalism throughout all the Hopi communities is somewhat overstated.
It's fascinating, and the area's not one I'm over-familiar with, but the ethnography here seems insecure and not entirely reliable. (We very rarely hear his informants directly in their own words, and they disappear anonymously into Waters's construction of a synthetic whole that turns out not to reflect the reality of his informants' actual lives). I'll read further.
Waters is careful to begin with the most universalised view of Hopi belief practice, through sections that are littered with promises that the material under discussion will finally be explained properly at a later point in the text. The religious universalising goes too far, to the point where Waters is all but arguing identity with far eastern religious practices he'd introduced as analogies (while simultaneously downplaying actual historical assessments of the other potential influences). However, when we reach the useful final historical section, it becomes clear that even his proposed universalism throughout all the Hopi communities is somewhat overstated.
It's fascinating, and the area's not one I'm over-familiar with, but the ethnography here seems insecure and not entirely reliable. (We very rarely hear his informants directly in their own words, and they disappear anonymously into Waters's construction of a synthetic whole that turns out not to reflect the reality of his informants' actual lives). I'll read further.