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Bureaucratic gifts: Religious conversion, change, and exchange in Israel
Author(s) -
KRAVELTOVI MICHAL
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1111/amet.12107
Subject(s) - bureaucracy , sociology , kinship , state (computer science) , politics , reciprocity (cultural anthropology) , judaism , biopower , political economy , political science , law , anthropology , history , archaeology , algorithm , computer science
Viewing religious conversion through the lens of exchange rather than change calls attention to the web of interactions, practices, and discourses that constitute conversion as a relational domain. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork that straddles the institutionalized interface of state‐run Jewish conversion in Israel, I show how the conversion process constitutes a reciprocal transaction by which each party to the exchange—the state and its subjects—provides the other with national recognition while also receiving and thus validating its own national identity. I trace the historical and political circumstances that have entangled the Jewish state and a significant cohort of Jewish converts within this reciprocal relationship. In doing so, I identify the biopolitical, moral, and bureaucratic frameworks that bear on this institutional transaction. [ conversion, reciprocity, exchange, biopolitics, bureaucracy, ethnography of the state, Jews, Israel ]