This article reviews the anthropological scholarship that engages with religious conversion as a political phenomenon, broadly defined. It develops the idea of making a difference as an overarching framework with a double meaning. First, this idiom captures how, by framing religious conversion in political terms, anthropologists have claimed to have substantially intervened—have made a difference, so to speak—in the discussion of conversion. Second, the article sets aside the prevalent problematization of conversion as a category of change, showing instead how anthropologists have sought to establish how religious change makes a difference—in the interweaved realities of individuals, collectives, and polities. I scrutinize and contextualize the belated consolidation of this area of inquiry, map its major strands, and identify the interrelated theoretical developments within anthropology. Seeing these strands as a generative domain of inquiry, I conclude with a number of suggestions for future research, such as paying closer attention to political conversions and to the links between religious conversion and political crises.

中文翻译：

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有所作为：宗教皈依的政治生活


本文回顾了将宗教皈依作为一种广义政治现象进行研究的人类学学术成果。它将“有所作为”的理念发展为具有双重意义的总体框架。首先，这个习语捕捉到了人类学家如何通过用政治术语来界定宗教皈依，从而声称自己在皈依的讨论中进行了实质性干预——可以说已经产生了影响。其次，本文搁置了普遍存在的将皈依视为变革类别的问题，而是展示了人类学家如何试图确定宗教变革如何在个人、集体和政体交织的现实中产生影响。我仔细审视了这一研究领域迟来的巩固，并对其进行了背景分析，绘制了其主要线索，并确定了人类学内部相互关联的理论发展。将这些线索视为探究的生成领域，我最后对未来的研究提出了一些建议，例如更加关注政治转变以及宗教转变与政治危机之间的联系。