abstract: This dissertation project addresses one of the most critical problems in the study of religion: how new formations of religion are constructed and constituted. My work builds on the recent revisions of the secularization theory, which demonstrates the alternative and hybrid ways people seek out religion in modernity. To this end, my project examines the emerging popularity and phenomenon of international meditation centers in Thailand, focusing on encounters between international meditation center teachers and their international students. Through participant observation and in-depth interviews at these sites throughout Thailand, my project explores the social processes of religious change and adaptation, and the construction of religious meaning. I detail the historical conditions that led to the formation of persisting ideas of Buddhism by tracing the continuities between Orientalist interpretations and modern-day spiritual seekers. My work contributes to a greater understanding of the most recent articulation of this engagement and interaction between Buddhism and the international community and adds to the burgeoning scholarship that reconsiders the relationship between religion and modernity. I investigate this relationship in regard to international meditation centers in Thailand through three angles: promotional materials concerning meditation in Thailand, experiences of international meditators, and teachings of international meditation center teachers. I contextualize this ethnographic analysis with an evaluation of the relationship of Buddhism to discourses of modernity and Orientalism as well as a historical inquiry into the rise of lay meditation in Thailand. Throughout I argue that international meditators' engagement with meditation in Thai temples constitutes a hybrid religiosity where the decontextualized practice of meditation is mixed with both non-religious and other religious beliefs and practices. Social discourses and practices involving meditation, even in a Buddhist country, demonstrate the deconstruction of traditional religiosity in modernity and the rise of hybrid religiosity. Through the decontextualization of meditation and the discourse of the practice having no religious boundaries, meditation becomes mixed with tourism, therapy, healing, as well as other religious and secular practices. This research contributes to studies of Theravada Buddhism as well as modern, global religions and the contemporary intersection between religion and tourism. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Religious Studies 2012

This thesis describes effects of Luther Decade on tourism in Germany. It deals with German tourism market and its segments of cultural and spiritual tourism, as well as with potential of Luther Decade for tourism. It characterizes meaning of Luther Decade for Germany and the worldwide effect of reformation and presents the organizational structure of Luther Decade. It defines potential of Luther Decade for tourism of three German countries: Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, using SWOT analysis. The outcome of the thesis is that the effect of Luther Decade on visit rate in German tourism cannot be proved, because of missing statistical data. Luther Decade is a contribution for tourism due to financial investment in tourism infrastructure and sights reconstruction. It also has a positive impact on Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt who received most of the financial resources and who are being promoted at home and abroad. Germany should monitor visitors of Luther Decade and continuously evaluate this project.