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The Centre for Himalayan Studies and the Southeast Asia Centre units of the French CNRS (Villejuif / Paris) are pursuing their collaboration in the form of a series of day-long thematic workshops in the comparative anthropology of Buddhism, this year (2015-16) on the general theme of “Religion and the Secular”.This year's third workshop will be held exceptionally on a Tuesday: 24 May 2016.Its theme is:Ritual and modernity in Buddhist contexts.As a conceptual backdrop to this workshop, one finds theories of modernity and disenchantment and their crucial correctives: theories of enchanted modernity, scholarship on prosperity religions, and the like. It is also essential, in this workshop, to recognize the diverse nature of what we call "ritual": the above-mentioned theoretical discussions have focused primarily on rituals of this-worldly efficacy and potency—magical rituals, if one wants—but the question of other forms of ritual, such as mass collective religious rituals, and their own possible "modern" specificities (as addressed here in M. Kapstein's talk), needs also to be addressed.Please find the short program below, and the complete program, with abstracts and bibliographical suggestions, here.All interested scholars and students are most welcome to join us.Please contact: Nicolas Sihlé (nsihle [at] vjf.cnrs.fr).&#160;Past and future sessions of these workshops:2012-13:The place of teachings in processes of transmission and conversion.Variations on the Buddhist gift.Buddhism and the State.2013-14 (1st year of the "Buddhist religious fields" cycle):Monasticism.Non-monastic Buddhist specialists.Possession specialists.2014-15 (2nd year of the "Buddhist religious fields" cycle):Buddhism and the spirit cults revisited.Gender and Buddhist religious fields.The laity in contemporary Buddhist religious fields: categories, actors, roles.2015-16 ("Religion and the Secular" cycle):Politics and Religion.Religion and Economy.Ritual and Modernity.&#160;