Rite of passing: Bureaucratic encounters, dramaturgy, and Jewish conversion in Israel

• Published in: American ethnologist Vol. 39; no. 2; pp. 371 - 388
• Main Author: KRAVEL-TOVI, MICHAL
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Malden, USA Wiley Subscription Services 01.05.2012; Blackwell Publishing Inc; Wiley; American Ethnological Society; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
• Subjects: Anthropology of religion; Bureaucracy; Conversion; Criminal conversion; Dramaturges; Ethnographic research; Ethnography; Ethnology; Government bureaucracy; Honesty; Israel; Jewish people; Jewish rituals; Jews; Judaism; Judges; Knowledge; Middle East; Power; Religious conversion; Social interaction; Social organization, political organization and power, relations with the State; Social relations. Intercultural and interethnic relations. Collective identity; Social structure and social relations; State intervention; State power; Theater; Near East; Israel; Ethnography; Dramaturgy; Rite of passage; Bureaucracy; Knowledge; ethnography of the state; performance, power/knowledge; Religious conversion; State; Israel; passing; Performance; Power
• ISSN: 0094-0496; 1548-1425; 1548-1425
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2012.01370.x

On the basis of an ethnographic analysis of the state-run Jewish conversion project in Israel, I address the question of how bureaucrats come to know the subjects they serve. By analyzing how state agents construct the bureaucratic encounter with converts as a dramaturgical exchange, I theorize performance as an institutional mechanism through which bureaucratic knowledge is produced. The notion of "dramaturgy" sheds light not only on the everyday practices of state governmental power but also on the fragile, collaborative dynamics that underwrite the bureaucratic encounter. Such an analysis offers to complicate the notion of "power/knowledge" so often associated with bureaucratic institutions.