0844/2009 - The frontiers of medicalization: tensions around identification and valuation of child undernutrition in a primary health care centre of Buenos Aires city
Las fronteras de la medicalización: tensiones en torno a la identificación y valoración de la desnutrición infantil en un centro de atención primaria de la ciudad de Buenos Aires
Publicado
Author:
• Damian Herkovits - Herkovits, D. - Buenos Aires - Fundacion PROSAMA - <damherk@gmail.com>ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6280-976X
Thematic Area:
Não CategorizadoAbstract:
The process of medicalization and its consequences in the production of subjectivities have been highlighted by human science in the study of health and disease process. Nevertheless, the analysis of its local expressions remains insufficient treated. The purpose of this paper is to explore this field by an ethnographic study of the medicalization process of child undernutrition in a primary health centre of Buenos Aires city. We will describe analytically the singularities involved in the body perception and its alimentary context by health professionals and their patients. We highlight that these constructions, based in the social positions of the actors, impeded the institutionalization of biomedicine health perspective. Based in these results, we propose to analyze the medicalization beyond the logic of imposition. The social history of the groups involved and their relations are basic elements to understand the singularities of those process.Key words: food, body, child malnutrition, conflict, medicalization.
