Medical Sociology in Latin America

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Castro
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Public Health ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Medical Sociology ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
Public Health Institutions ◽  
The One ◽  
High Level

This chapter outlines the development of the field of medical sociology in Latin America, showing its links to other fields (the medical field, the scientific-academic field, and the field of power). A controversy has arisen within the discipline regarding its object and includes the political agenda of social sciences in health and the relationship between social sciences, medicine, and public health. On the one hand, a relatively autonomous medical sociology has emerged, one nested in some universities and research centers, and thus remains foreign to the health sector. It is an endeavor that can reach a high level of theoretical, methodological, and critical development but has little impact on health policies. On the other hand, government public health institutions promote the development of a “domesticated” social science for instrumental purposes and without a significant critical potential. The exception to the rule is Brazil, where collective health has gained pre-eminence unparalleled in other countries of the region. The chapter concludes by describing how these “debates” are shaped by the stakeholders’ position in the field.

scholarly journals Advancing environmental public health in Latin America and the Caribbean

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Marcelo Korc ◽  
Fred Hauchman
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Leadership Role ◽  
The Public ◽  
Environmental Public Health ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Health And Well Being

This paper highlights the important leadership role of the public health sector, working with other governmental sectors and nongovernmental entities, to advance environmental public health in Latin America and the Caribbean toward the achievement of 2030 Sustainable Development Goal 3: Health and Well-Being. The most pressing current and future environmental public health threats are discussed, followed by a brief review of major historical and current international and regional efforts to address these concerns. The paper concludes with a discussion of three major components of a regional environmental public health agenda that responsible parties can undertake to make significant progress toward ensuring the health and well-being of all people throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

Introduction: Health Inequities in India—The Larger Dimensions

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Purendra Prasad
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Medical Anthropology ◽  
Medical Sociology ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Health Inequities ◽  
Global Market ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Health Inequities In India ◽  
Epidemiology And Public Health

This chapter provides a narrative that explains the politics of access (distribution, utilization, outcomes) as well as the context in which health inequalities are produced in India. While fields such as medical sociology, medical anthropology, health economics, community health, social medicine, epidemiology, and public health, among others, with their own theories, methods, and approaches are able to contribute distinctive dimensions, it becomes essential to engage across the boundaries in a collective manner to understand the complexity of health care that is increasingly shaped by the global market forces and ideologies. This volume thus opens up the possibility of constructing a new paradigm for understanding health sector as well as signalling a new field ‘health care studies’.

scholarly journals Lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic: sustainability is an indispensable condition of Global Health Security

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deisy de Freitas Lima Ventura ◽  
Gabriela Marques di Giulio ◽  
Danielle Hanna Rached
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Universal Access ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Global Health Security ◽  
Health Security ◽  
Health Authorities ◽  
Multiple Dimensions ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
The One

Abstract Among the possible developments of the Covid-19 pandemic at the international and national levels is the advancement of the Global Health Security (GHS) agenda. On the one hand, GHS might be able to give priority to health problems on the political agenda-setting, on the other, however, it might open up space for public security actors in decision-making processes to the detriment of the power of health authorities. This article critically analyzes the concept and the progress of the GHS agenda seeking to demonstrate that there can be no security in matters of public health when sustainability in its multiple dimensions is not taken into account. At the end, sustainability has a twofold responsibility: to maintain the consistency and permanence of emergency response actions, especially with investments in public health systems, with universal access, and to minimize the structural causes of pandemics linked to the environment.

Sanitaristas, Petistas, and the Post-Neoliberal Public Health State in Porto Alegre

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher L. Gibson
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Health State ◽  
Structural Constraints ◽  
Porto Alegre ◽  
Critical Dimensions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Governance Institutions ◽  
America Latina ◽  
High Level

Scholars of the post-neoliberal state in Latin America commonly trace universal social policies to ruling left parties and deepened democracy. Yet, such accounts often overlook how subnational politics in highly decentralized democracies like Brazil’s can mediate this relationship. Examining such politics in the Brazilian município of Porto Alegre since 1988 suggests that structural constraints and competing programmatic agendas of Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party—PT) governments complicated expansion of the public health sector. The município’s surprisingly modest delivery of such services is traceable to enduring deemphasis on critical dimensions of state building in this sector by several PT administrations and the integration of civil society actors into multiple participatory governance institutions with little power over this process. Even in such contexts, far-reaching participatory democratic institutions are no panacea for fulfilling the universal social policy ambitions of local post-neoliberal states that depend heavily upon high-level political appointees for their effectiveness.Estudiosos do Estado pós-neoliberal na América Latina frequentemente associam políticas sociais universais aos partidos governantes de esquerda e à solidificação da democracia. Contudo, tais narrativas ignoram como a política subnacional em democracias muito descentralizadas, como a brasileira, mediam esse relacionamento. Um exame dessa dinâmica política no município de Porto Alegre desde 1988 sugere que restrições estruturais e agendas programáticas competitivas de governos do Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) ampliou a complexidade de expansão do setor de saúde pública. A modesta oferta de serviços de saúde naquele município pode ser atribuída a um esvaziamento contínuo das dimensões criticas da ingerencia do Estado nesse setor por parte de várias administrações petistas e à integração de atores da sociedade civil em múltiplas instituições de governança participatória com pouco poder de decisão sobre tal processo. Mesmo nesses contextos, instituições democráticas com alcance amplo não constituem uma panacéia que realize as ambições sociais universais de Estados locais pós-neoliberais, os quais dependem muito de políticos do alto escalão em cargos comissionados para serem eficientes.

Public Health and the Virtues of Responsibility, Compassion and Humility

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Nihlén Fahlquist
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Medical Care ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Health Professionals ◽  
The People ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract In contrast to medical care, which is focused on the individual patient, public health is focused on collective health. This article argues that, in order to better protect the individual, discussions of public health would benefit from incorporating the insights of virtue ethics. There are three reasons to for this. First, the collective focus may cause neglect of the effects of public health policy on the interests and rights of individuals and minorities. Second, whereas the one-on-one encounters in medical care facilitate a compassionate and caring attitude, public health involves a distance between professionals and the public. Therefore, public health professionals must use imagination and care to evaluate the effects of policies on individuals. Third, the relationship between public health professionals and the people who are affected by the policies they design is characterized by power asymmetry, demanding a high level of responsibility from those who wield them. Against this background, it is argued that public health professionals should develop the virtues of responsibility, compassion and humility. The examples provided, i.e. breastfeeding information and vaccination policy, illustrate the importance of these virtues, which needed for normative as well as instrumental reasons, i.e. as a way to restore trust.

THE PEDIATRICIAN AND THE PUBLIC

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1953 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 525-537
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Clinical Teaching ◽  
Public Health Practice ◽  
Family Care ◽  
Care Program ◽  
Heavy Load ◽  
Teaching And Research ◽  
The Public ◽  
The One ◽  
High Level

THE two home medical care programs described below are attempts to expand the teaching of medical students and house staff beyond the hospital walls into the home and community. The need for this expansion is a matter of sharp debate. On the one hand are those who point to the heavy load of the present curriculum and to the high level of current clinical teaching and research. These people say that the chief aim of medicine is to study, diagnose and treat disease and this objective must not be diluted by concern with such things as health supervision and the influence of socio-economic factors in the home and community. These things can be learned after the physician starts practice. On the other side are those who believe that the changing content of medical and public health practice requires some addition to present teaching and research and that this is best accomplished in a family care program. They point out that the work of the clinician and of the public health officer is coming closer and closer together. The content of medical practice has changed and is changing so that approximately half of the time of the general practitioner, the internist, the pediatrician and the obstetrician is concerned with normal physiology and with emotional stresses which are so common and predictable that they too must be considered normal.

The Sociology of Religion in Latin America: from Theoretical Dependence to Its Specificity

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberto Blancarte
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Emerging Economies ◽  
Sociology Of Religion ◽  
Theoretical Dependence ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
American Sociology ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social

Latin American sociology of religion is a relatively young discipline, although institutionally speaking, it has not lagged as far behind European sociology as we usually think. There is, in fact, an early link between Continental Europe and Latin America in the development of institutions dedicated to the study of religions. They have witnessed an incredible expansion, particularly over the past three decades. The author offers a general panorama of the trajectory of the subdiscipline and the development of a robust academic field. The reasons for this intellectual explosion go from the development of a scientific institutional framework for social sciences in emerging economies to the changing structure of religions and the social awareness of a historical plurality of beliefs in Latin America.

scholarly journals Legal Systems of the Post-Soviet Non-Recognized States: Structural Problems

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 81-100
Author(s):  
Vladislav Tolstykh ◽  
Mariam Grigoryan ◽  
Tatiana Kovalenko
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Commercial Law ◽  
Commercial Activities ◽  
Structural Problems ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The One ◽  
High Level

There are currently six non-recognized states (NRSs) in the post-Soviet space: the Pridnestrovian Moldovan Republic (PMR, 1990), the Republic of South Ossetia (RSO, 1990), the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR, 1991), the Republic of Abkhazia (RA, 1994), the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR, 2014) and the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR, 2014). All of them have been formed as a result of armed conflicts between a state vigorously pursuing the policy of national unification and a minority residing compactly. On the one hand, the legal systems of these states ensure that both the state and the civil society function effectively. In particular, each legal system forms a basis for the state’s political system, sets out human rights and their guarantees and provides necessary regulation of commercial activities. On the other hand, these legal systems reflect certain “statehood deficiency” and are subject to a number of serious problems, including being dependent on political agenda as well as on certain foreign legal systems, providing no personal jurisdiction or property guarantees and having significantly underdeveloped commercial law and judicial system. This “statehood deficiency” has two main causes: the community being not ready for state building (weak statehood traditions; lack of qualified personnel, economic resources and industrial base; high level of corruption, etc.) and the state being non-recognized (including the consequences of this status such as inability to participate in international cooperation, dependence on major geopolitical players, existence of an external threat, etc.).

BEAUTY OR BEAST, OR MONSTROUS REGIMENTS? ROBERTSON AND BURKE ON WOMEN AND THE PUBLIC SCENE

2004 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
LÁSZLÓ KONTLER
Keyword(s):  
Political Agenda ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Role ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Political Roles ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The One ◽  
High Level ◽  
William Robertson

The Enlightenment can usefully be conceived as a confrontation with eroding Christian and classical republican ethics. It was permeated with assumptions about women and the gendered dichotomy between public and private spheres. While William Robertson and Edmund Burke, along with many of their contemporaries, remained committed to Christian- and republican-based conceptions of virtue, they were working within a new Enlightenment paradigm. Its political agenda has to be understood by way of its configurations of beauty, taste, and morality as these relate to the imperatives and needs of modern societies of a high level of sophistication and differentiation. An examination of two themes in the work of Robertson and Burke—the nature of women in “savage” and “civilized” societies, and “beauty in distress”—reveals how long-held convictions about the character of women, especially with regard to their capacity and right to appear in the public domain, were modified and adjusted to the idea of progress, and became central to an enlightened affirmation of modern European civilization. The result had its ironies. On the one hand, a positive public and indeed political role was invented for women that is central to understanding the overall thrust of a political discourse based on politeness, civility, refinement and similar values specifically associated with modern commercial societies. On the other hand, though the complexity of this model of society gave ample scope to informal and spontaneous vehicles of social disciplining, whatever room was left for the more traditional ways of governing polities through the direct exertion of political power remained closed to women: the very features that opened for them the opportunity to play political roles through sociability in the public sphere also circumscribed them.

scholarly journals Indigenous health in Brazil: Reflections on forms of violence

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Costa Teixeira ◽  
Cristina Dias da Silva
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Interpersonal Violence ◽  
Health Workers ◽  
Indigenous Health ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
The One ◽  
Government Workers ◽  
Forms Of Violence

Abstract This article concerns public health policies for the Indigenous peoples of Brazil, focusing on relations of violence observed by the authors during their research. We draw attention to different types of violence through an analysis that articulates fieldwork on primary health care in Indigenous Areas with observations of political negotiations concerning health issues involving Indigenous leaders and government workers. There is, on the one hand, the habitual symbolic violence that can be observed in daily interactions between health workers and Indigenous patients, and, on the other, the contradictions of an official political rhetoric that assents to Indigenous authority and then systematically dismisses it when decisions that involve public health are put into practice. The research combines different methodological strategies (intensive fieldwork, research on public policy documents, participant observation of political meetings, interview with indigenes and managers, etc.) to establish correlations between interpersonal violence and structural violence along democratic processes of public policies building in Indigenous health. From this perspective, the paper addresses the violence in health sector beyond the individuals and their intentions; it proposes that violence in health must be interpreted against the backdrop of a broader discussion on the construction of Indigenous citizenship that articulates tutelage and political participation in the politics of health practices in Brazil.

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