By maintaining that it is not up to the anthropologist to disempower native discourses, whatever their propositions may be, this work aims to take into account differing statements about processes of religious conversion. Distinct conversion phenomena are not mobilized to be explained by the templates presented, but to evince what are the pressupositions and the applicability of these templates. In this way, and by supporting itself with ethnographic examples, it aims to reposition certain questions about what would be properly called a conversion and how it might take place. Lastly, it analyses how the movements of conversion contemplated implicate a challenge to the notions of acculturation or social change.
Religious conversion; templates of conversion; acculturation; social change