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| Author(s): |
Regina Erika Domingos de Figueiredo
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Doctoral Thesis |
| Press: | Campinas, SP. |
| Institution: | Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas |
| Defense date: | 2009-10-14 |
| Examining board members: |
Mariza Correa;
Ana Maria Canesqui;
Antônio Sérgio A Guimarães;
Nisia Trindade Lima;
Omar Ribeiro Thomaz
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| Advisor: | Mariza Correa |
| Abstract | |
This study aims to clarify the post-war chapter of the history of Anthropology that refers to the anthropologists' involvement in technical assistance programs in Latin America, and the application of anthropological knowledge to the public health field. The research reveals how North American social scientists from the Smithsonian Institution, Brazilian and Mexican anthropologists from governmental or cooperative agencies joined sanitarians, administrators and educators who had a common agenda on medical sanitary action as well as development projects addressed to the most remote and underdeveloped communities of countries like Brazil and Mexico. The specialists believed in the contribution that cultural relativism could offer in considering the need for understanding the sociocultural reality of the populations that were being influenced by modernizing interventions. They also considered that overcoming the locals' resistance to change represented a prerequisite for the implementation and efficiency of health policies and sanitary education. In Brazil, the National Service for Protection of Indigenous People (Serviço Nacional de Proteção ao Índio), the Special Service for Public Health (Serviço Especial de Saúde Pública) and the National Institute for Pedagogical Studies (Instituto Nacional de Estudos Pedagógicos) were pioneering organizations for the incorporation of the social sciences in an agenda for social change.The employment of ethnographic knowledge concerning social life as a valid resource for the development and improvement of public policies was also present in the community studies programs in the 50's, like the São Francisco Project and the Bahia-Columbia Project. Some of these experiences have already been the object of analysis, and others have their history recaptured now. The main purpose here is to see them as a whole in a comparative perspective aiming to compose a wide panorama of interests and compromises of post-war anthropology and its inclusion in non-academic domains, as well as estimate the contribution from the subject, and from its relativistic approach, to the intervention programs, especially the ones related to public health. (AU) | |