Challenges for a socio-anthropology of health: towards a theoretical and methodological approach regarding training, research, and action

Authors

  • Andrea Álvarez Carimoney Universidad de Chile
  • Marisol Ruiz Contreras Universidad Austral de Chile
  • María Sol Anigstein Universidad de Chile
  • Ana María Oyarce Universidad de Chile

Abstract

This article reflects upon on the Anthropology of Health, understood as a field of convergence between the social sciences and the biomedical sciences, to account for its possibilities and challenges in the discipline of public health. A critical dialogical approach is proposed on the paradigms that support both disciplines, configuring a transdisciplinary space that guides research and teaching towards the transformation of the conditions of existence that underlie the main determinations of the health and well-being of people and communities. Based on the mind-body dichotomy in mental and reproductive health, three areas of tension are proposed, with their respective proposals that make anthropology a unique and powerful perspective to work in the field of public health, namely: paradigmatic tension and transdisciplinarity; the dilemmas between disciplinary languages and translatability, as well as the problematic between medical anthropology and applied anthropology, proposing a critical, applied and implied anthropology of health.

Keywords:

anthropology of health, critical medical anthropology, public health, transdisciplinarity