HOW WE ARE, WHAT WE BELIEVE, HOW WE LIVE: Culture, religions and daily life

This book is a compilation of previously published articles and book chapters, which have been personally selected by its author, Genaro Zalpa, from among his extensive academic work.

In the author's words:

“Readers will notice that there are empirical research articles on the Purépecha region and on the customs of my people, on comics (although not on the ones I read in my childhood), on religion and beliefs, on the culture of organizations and globalization, on corruption as a cultural problem of daily life in our country, among others.

It seems to me that all these articles, in their diversity, can form a unit composed of the four sections that bring them together: Theory, Culture, Religion and Methodology.

The theory section, composed of essays that are the result of theoretical research, is placed at the beginning because logically they precede the other articles, which does not mean that they were written and published previously.

I put it at the beginning because, from my point of view, theory fulfills the functions of a map of reality which, without coinciding with it (if it did coincide it would stop being a map and would simply be reality) allows us to see phenomena that we would not see without theory.

For example, the importance of cultures and religions, which make up two of the sections of this compilation. Finally, a cultivated curiosity would not be complete without methodological tools for research. This does not mean, of course, that they are the only tools I have used. I include them here because they are, in a way, an original contribution to the theory-methodology relationship.