Perceptions culturelles dans un contexte de néoplasme pédiatrique: Considérations transculturelles entre l'Occident et le Japon

This research has for objective the investigation of the process of enculturation at a sick child affected by a neoplastic disease. To this end, this report analyzes at first, the culture through an ethnographical reading of its definition, its paradoxes and its anthropological axioms. This first part urges us to widen our considerations, and to study the various vectors by which the culture passes in transit but also specific cultural items. In the second part, we review medical clinical notions of neoplasm at the child. A rigorous analysis of main oncologic typologies, their treatments and side effects are presented. The third part brings the reader through a general medical anthropology which offers an understanding of the disease as a cultural experience. For purpose of illustrations, a concise cross-cultural reflection between Japan and the West is carried out. For these both populations, the epidemiological situation of childhood cancer is proposed at first to underline then cultural elements of difference and convergence. A reflection on clinical implications with which health practitioners could be confronted comes to conclude.