Social recognition and inter subjective autonomy of senior in medium size municipal district from São Paulo

• Grant number: 07/07546-8
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: May 01, 2008
• End date: October 31, 2010
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Collective Health - Public Health
• Principal Investigator: Rodolfo Franco Puttini
• Grantee: Rodolfo Franco Puttini
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Medicina (FMB). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Botucatu. Botucatu , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The goal of this project is to study the degree of social or intersubjective autonomy of the elderly and to add elements for a comprehensive elderly vulnerability model construction, capable of contributing to the improvement of governmental policies and health practices. By intersubjective autonomy, as stated by Honneth (2003), one understands the set of social relations of recognition (in which social subjects recognize and are recognized, alternatively) which gives the individual an identity, guaranteeing him/her self-confidence, self-respect and self-esteem simultaneously. Thus, starting from the existing database, 24 elderly people will be selected at random and by gender, education level and income criteria. After they agree to participate, data collection will be carried out through individual semi-directed interviews, with the purpose of identifying the intersubjective autonomy experience they have accumulated in the context of social relations of affection, legal recognition and esteem they keep in the family and community contexts. The transcribed recordings will be analyzed as qualitative material and destroyed after use. The analysis of the qualitative data, regarding the three dimensions of the intersubjective autonomy, will be supported by Jürgen Habermas’s formal pragmatics categories and by the implicit moral intent brought up by the elderly who seek recognition. With the present qualitative study it is expected that the information on the profile of the Botucatu’s municipality population above sixty years of age or older be broadened. It is also expected that a representative theoretical model about the vulnerability of the elderly be developed. Final results will be published in journals, following the approval of the Ethics Committee of the Medicine College at Botucatu. (AU)