| This dissertation provides an ethnographic examination of knowledge, authority, and influence based on research on and around the active volcano Popocatepetl, 70km southeast of Mexico City. Indigenous Nahua ritual specialists (tiemperos, or "weather-workers") maintain an exchange relationship with mountain-spirits that govern the weather. Since its reactivation in 1994, "el Popo" has also received scrutiny from Mexican government-appointed earth scientists, whose research grounds a technocratic "disaster management" effort affecting tens of thousands of at-risk residents. The volcano zone (like Mexico as a whole) produces a world-renowned output of UFO reports, whose investigators discern a direct connection to volcanic activity.; Members of this triad of expert knowers make often conflicting claims to knowledge and epistemic authority that refer to the volcano, Mexican science, and Mexican society. In many cases they interact with each other, even using each other to further their own claims, within an "ideological arena" of actors circulating and contesting claims, demarcating the arena, and creating alignments with others.; These parallels in operation and interaction suggest a reframing of anthropological studies of science, religion, and knowledge. To make sense of these interactions I propose a model of ortho-, hetero-, and extrascientific roles which I believe can shed light on other knowledge fields, as well as discussions of "pseudoscience." Considering how knowledge claims result in "epistemic alignments" allows us to examine the instrumental and accidental effects of knowledge, and to critically rework more politicized approaches to epistemology (e.g., discussions of power/knowledge). |
