Introduction to Section 4

This fourth section of the volume focuses on heterogeneous items that the technical jargon of related disciplines and specialized bodies of knowledge have traditionally worked to isolate from one another, for instance by tagging them as conversion and Judaization, apostasy and Hellenization, narrativization, textualization and interpolation, commentary, and accommodation. In this volume, these items are all grouped together under a general heading that treats them as techniques and procedures by which non-discursive practices, discourses, and writings are rekeyed/recoded within religiously framed contexts of meaning-making and interaction. In addition to this unifying function, the “Switching the code” designation has a second advantage: it keeps together transformational activities that Goffman himself would rather distinguish into two classes, “keyings” and “fabrications,” according to the varying intentionality of the practitioner/s.