Dynamics of Religious Conflict and Violence in Indigenous Oaxaca, Mexico. A Process-Tracing Approach

Abstract

Die Dissertation ist gesperrt bis zum 18. November 2027 !

This dissertation investigates how Catholic and Protestant groups negotiate belonging, moral authority, and local governance in Indigenous communities of Oaxaca, Mexico. It combines grounded theory with process tracing and draws on six reconstructed village histories, thirty-four interviews, four focus groups, more than thirty sets of assembly minutes, and on-site fieldwork in ten of fifteen selected communities.

The analysis identifies three conflict trajectories: elite-driven violent escalation, precarious religious coexistence, and negotiated religious conviviality, and shows how eight interlocking mechanisms (intangible violence, coping repertoires, Communal Protestantism, religious antagonistic narratives, religious literacy, cross-scalar influence, narrative memory, and institutional flexibility) channel cases toward one pathway or another.

Findings challenge the notion that doctrinal difference alone propels conflict. Protestant conversion becomes contentious when it is narratively framed as a betrayal of communal order and when communal rules enable discretionary sanctions. Peace, likewise, is not the default but a fragile achievement of interpretive labor, procedural adaptation, and strategic negotiated endurance; the everyday practices through which villagers make pluralism livable under symbolic pressure.

Empirically, the project offers a comparative typology of the three trajectories; theoretically, it advances a multi-mechanism model linking symbolic systems to institutional routines; methodologically, it demonstrates how grounded fieldwork and within-case sequencing yield mid-range causal explanations. Taken together, the study shows that religious conflict and coexistence in Indigenous Oaxaca are reversible, negotiated states rather than fixed endpoints, inviting scholars and practitioners to look beyond doctrinal distance and focus instead on the narrative, procedural, and affective work that sustains (or ruptures) civic common life.