Marc Lebranchu a contribué au quatorzième volume de l'Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion, numéro dirigé par Lionel Obadia et Enzo Pace et portant le titre : Buddhist Ritual Practices as Religious Practices Adapted to the Middle Class (Les pratiques rituelles bouddhistes en tant que pratiques religieuses adaptées aux classes moyennes). Son chapitre, intitulé "Daoism in the West", explore les rapports entre taoïsme et Occident, ainsi que la transformation et la sécularisation des pratiques et enseignements de cette religion similaires à ce que les mouvements "New Age" occidentaux ont pu faire avec les pratiques et enseignements du bouddhisme et l'hindouisme.

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If the Western reception of Hinduism and Buddhism is well known, this is not the case for Taoism, whose interest in the West began in the 1970s in the milieu of Chinese medicine and martial arts before spreading to the general audience. Its teachings and practices have been secularized and hybridized and reduced to a collection of New Age concepts and wellness techniques. This process of westernization and (re)invention of a tradition has led to the creation of a popular western neo-Taoism which evolves between the market of new spiritualities and personal development, new religious movements and more rarely, religious conversion.   Page du chapitre : https://brill.com/display/book/9789004686250/BP000012.xml