[Social perception of arterial hypertension from a transcultural perspective]

From ethnological and psychological inquiries, during an ordinary elaboration of methodology (between France and West Africa that took place in Ivory Coast) the author emphasizes the differential value of the terms hypertension or hypotension with a systematic claim of a take of blood pressure in Europe. This uncommon fact in West Africa becomes integrated into the notion of a medical technology and raises the problem of evolution of society (non migration, new forms of alimentation, work and urbanization...). While in France the inquiry is dependent on an image of an hypertensive, his body, his personality, his problems; in Ivory Coast people refer to a body language, the psychosomatic damage including the existential malaise politics, cultural confrontations, stress pathology ... all this with periods of high or low tension internal or external pressures, getting out of the medical act consisting in a take of blood pressure or a particular psychic state testing, the nervous break down or anxiety for example. In a methodological field, the author from different levels of view points (sociological, statistical, ethnological and clinical) is in search of an adapted synthetic formula in anthropology for situations of substitution and social differences.