Towards a positive cross-cultural lexicography: Enriching our emotional landscape through 216 ‘untranslatable’ words pertaining to well-being

Although much attention has been paid to culture-specific psychopathologies, there have been no comparable attempts to chart positive mental states that may be particular to certain cultures. This paper outlines the beginnings of a positive cross-cultural lexicography of ‘untranslatable’ words pertaining to wellbeing, culled from across the world’s languages. A quasi-systematic search uncovered 216 such terms. Using grounded theory, these words were organised into three categories: feelings (comprising positive and complex feelings); relationships (comprising intimacy and pro-sociality); and character (comprising personal resources and spirituality). The paper has two main aims. First, it aims to provide a window onto cultural differences in constructions of wellbeing, thereby enriching our understanding of wellbeing. Second, a more ambitious aim is that this lexicon may help expand the emotional vocabulary of English speakers (and indeed speakers of all languages), and consequently enrich their experiences of wellbeing. The paper concludes by setting out a research agenda to pursue these aims further

A Summary of the Fight Colorectal Cancer Working Meeting: Exploring Risk Factors and Etiology of Sporadic Early-Age Onset Colorectal Cancer

Molecular tumour pathology - and tumour geneticsMTG2 - Moleculaire genetica van gastrointestinale tumore

A political ethnography of rural communities under an authoritarian regime: The case of Belarus

Cet article explicite d’abord les conditions d’une enquête d’ethnographie politique menée dans les campagnes de Biélorussie entre 2006 et 2013. Une triple difficulté a émergé : enquêter principalement auprès des classes populaires ; effectuer cette ethnographie dans un milieu, le monde rural, où l’État, par ses structures économiques et administratives, est omniprésent, et où le contrôle sur les personnes est particulièrement marqué ; travailler sur le politique dans un régime autoritaire hérité de l’Union soviétique qui n’admet pas de mise en cause et de débat critique. L’article caractérise ensuite les modalités de mise en œuvre d’une “ethnographie en pointillés”, qui s’est avérée fructueuse pour recueillir du matériau, et reposant essentiellement sur trois techniques : la “décérémonialisation” de la situation d’enquête, la familiarisation avec les enquêtés et la symétrisation des relations par l’exposition de soi. A noter que cet article est traduit d’un texte intitulé “Enquêter en Biélorussie. Une ethnographie politique des mondes ruraux en régime autoritaire”. La version originale est accessible librement sur le site du BMS, sous la forme d’un document complémentaire à la version publiée de l’article.This article firstly explains the conditions for a political ethnography survey conducted in rural Belarus between 2006 and 2013. Three difficulties became apparent: conducting a survey primarily among the lower classes; carrying out this ethnographic study in an environment – the rural world – in which the State, via its economic and administrative structures, is omnipresent, and in which there is particularly strong control over the people; and studying politics in an authoritarian regime inherited from the Soviet Union, which does not tolerate challenges to its authority or critical debate. The article then characterizes the implementation procedures for a “discrete ethnography”, which proved to be a fruitful approach for the collection of material, based primarily on three techniques: the “deceremonialization” of the survey situation, familiarization with the subjects of the survey and the symmetrization of relationships by self-exposition. It is worth noting that this article is the translated version of an article called “Enquêter en Biélorussie. Une ethnographie politique des mondes ruraux en régime autoritaire”. The original version is openly available on the BMS website as a complementary document to this article