Self-care and Empowerment: the diabetes care from associative experience

• Grant number: 11/22751-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: May 01, 2012
• End date: April 30, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Ana Maria Canesqui
• Grantee: Andréia Aparecida Ferreira Lopes
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Médicas (FCM). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project intends to analyze the meaning of the diabetics' empowerment establishing the relationship among: (1) the therapeutic proposal based on the largest autonomy of the patient's decision - which has been developed by the medical thought since the decade of 90 -, and (2) the way as the experience of the diabetes influences the cares of the body and the restructuring of the identity. The research aims at testing the ways by means of which the values of the individualism are activated in order to constitute the model of the diabetic responsible by the care of himself, taking into consideration that in this process the postures and behaviors that are related to the scope of the familiar relationships - that are generally related to the more holistic values - are confronted. Considering the fact that the programs of diabetic's education promote a way of learning and experiencing the values, knowledge and practices which has to be incorporated to an diabetic identity, the idea is to explore how these programs seem to gather specific conditions that allow them to promote new kinds of sociality, which are in connection with the perspective of the patient's larger autonomy in his treatment. Adopting a qualitative methodology, involving the analysis of both the medical texts and the ethnographic data about the practices developed in a specific diabetics association situated in the city of São Paulo, the objective is to explore the process of diabetics' empowerment in the wide context of the contemporary biopolitics.

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

ANDRÉIA APARECIDA FERREIRA LOPES. Cuidado e Empoderamento: a construção do sujeito responsável por sua saúde na experiência do diabetes. Saúde e Sociedade, v. 24, n. 2, p. 486-500, 2015-06-00. (11/22751-2)