research. The extensive use of conversation ana- lytic methods to study talk in workplace interac- tions and other organizational and professional settings has produced research with direct appli- cability to the improvement of the work done in those settings (see Heritage and Clayman 2010 for examples). Cross-References ▶ Collective Behavior ▶ Constructivism (Philosophy of Mind) ▶ Knowledge, Sociology of ▶ Narrative Psychology ▶ Natural Language Processing ▶ Organizational Behavior ▶ Phenomenology ▶ Philosophy of Language ▶ Psycholinguistics ▶ Social Psychology References Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Engle- wood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Heritage, J. (1984). Garfinkel and ethnomethodology. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Heritage, J. (1987). Ethnomethodology. In A. Giddens & J. Turner (Eds.), Social theory today (pp. 224–272). Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Heritage, J., & Clayman, S. E. (2010). Talk in action: Interactions, identities, and institutions. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Jefferson, G. (1974). Error correction as an interactional resource. Language in Society, 13(2), 181–199. Jefferson, G. (1984). Transcript notation. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. ix–xvi). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Sacks, H. (1984). Notes on methodology. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis (pp. 21–27). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sacks, H. (1992). Lectures in conversation. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn- taking for conversation. Language, 50, 696–735. Schegloff, E. A. (1979). Identification and recognition in telephone conversation openings. In G. Psathas (Ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 23–78). New York: Irvington Press. Whalen, J., Zimmerman, D. H., & Whalen, M. (1988). When words fail: A single case analysis. Social Prob- lems, 35(4), 335–362. Conversion Jakub Ciga ´n Department for the Study of Religions, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic Related Terms Religious affiliation; Religious commitment Description Conversion is surely one the most intriguing and controversial issues in social sciences and humanities still resisting universal definition or theory. Already in 1908, George Jackson had clearly stated that conversion resists all “stan- dardization” (Snow-Machalek 1984). Eighty years later, Thomas Robbins noted exactly the same by saying that conversion studies consist “of multiple confusions related to divergent pre- mises, conceptual frameworks, nomenclature and behavioural referents have employed by researchers” (Robbins 1988). The current situa- tion is not much different as there are no systematic programs of methodologically sophis- ticated research on conversion (Hood et al. 2009). One could say that conversion is simply a religious change, but in what sense religious, and what is the subject of the change? Conversion studies have no disciplinary autonomy. Conver- sion studies are represented by a bundle of vari- ous methods and approaches grouped under ambivalent concept of conversion depending on authors’ varied philosophical and theoretical affiliations and concerns. We, scholars of reli- gion, need to pay attention to what way we con- ceptualize conversion into assumptions we adopt C 502 Conversion A. L. C. Runehov & L. Oviedo (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religions, (pp. 502-506). Dordrecht: Springer. ISBN: 978-1-4020-8264-1.