Plural paths of health care: medicalization of the symbolic

Abstract

The possibilities of intervention in the health field are numerous and made its mark in humanity’s history. In the last centuries, health care was attributed to medicine, which, using institutional, legal, and scientific devices, became preponderant. One of the pillars of this profession is constituted in the processes of medicalization. This theoretical study aimed to problematize the hegemony of the notion of medicalization based on the Western scientific medical framework. Based on Foucauldian arguments about the attempts to standardize individuals based on the notions of health and disease intended by Western medicine, the need to consider the propositions that evoke plural therapies aimed at understanding the processes of health and illness in other perspectives are highlighted. Elaborated between two theoretical frontiers, the study firstly analyzes the historical constitution of medicine and its legitimacy as hegemonic knowledge. In sequence, we seek to blend the possibilities of intervention in the health care area, giving visibility to what Anthropology calls the medicalization of the symbolic, that encompasses the knowledge arising from the relational and affective daily life of different cultures. At the end of the trajectory, analyzes about the attempts to erase plural modes of existence undertaken from the hegemonic medicalization are encouraged, discussing the relevance of multiplying perspectives of intervention in health care to overcome this exclusivity, also considering the knowledge coming from social and cultural sources.