This book describes three impactful cases of political violence that broke out in Mexico in 1994, pointing to an important juncture in Mexican political development. At that point, the patrimonial order centered on the PRI and the Mexican presidency entered a momentous crisis that is still ongoing after a quarter of a century and caused the patrimonial order and the civil order to compete over Mexican public life. Such competition, in turn, unfolds at the cultural level on the terrain of three semantics of political violence that shape public debates over violence in Mexico. Ultimately, this...

Identifying scientism as religion’s secular counterpart, this collection studies contemporary contestations of the authority of science. These controversies suggest that what we are witnessing today is not an increase in the authority of science at the cost of religion, but a dual decline in the authorities of religion and science alike. This entails an erosion of the legitimacy of universally binding truth claims, be they religiously or scientifically informed. Approaching the issue from a cultural-sociological perspective and building on theories from the sociology of religion, the volume...