Global Journal of Human Social Science, G: Linguistics and Education, Volume 22 Issue 9

Body, Health and Society: Socioanthropological Considerations Régia Cristina Oliveira α & Eunice Almeida da Silva σ Abstract- This text presents a sociological reflection on the biomedical discourse on the body and health in our society. We propose to address the sociological, anthropological and historical studies on body, health, illness and the scientific field of Health. The objective is to provide a discussion on the processes of society medicalization and of social inequalities in health. Keywords: body; health and illness; social class; biomedicine. I. I ntroduction n a classic text titled “Health and Society”, author Donnangelo (1976) brings up a basic premise: in the relations that medicine keeps with the economic, political and ideological structure of societies where capitalist production predominate, medical practice ends up participating in the reproduction and maintenance of such structures by means of the upkeep of labour force and, further, of the participation in the control of social antagonisms. This is to say that medicine, in such contexts, articulates beyond technique with other social practices, establishing itself as an important discursive field, in the organisation of norms and interdictions. By means of different perspectives, several authors have analysed this aspect, among them Foucault (1976; 2006), Adam and Herzlich (2001), Fabiola Rohden, (2001), Camargo Júnior (2003), authors who studied the history of medicine in addition to the normative and moral interventions beyond technique that are at the service of the social configuration, of the division of roles that are to be maintained among individuals. In this relationship between medicine and society, Donnangelo (1976) highlights the discriminatory class character that is manifested in the manipulation of medical resources. Minayo (2001) analyses this aspect, underlining that to study the health field is to study social inequalities, being, therefore, necessary to mobilise the notion of social class in the perception of this field’s complexity. Such inequalities refer to the population’s differentiated access to health services, and, further, to the professionals’ very hierarchisation, inside which the hegemony of medical knowledge and its articulation with power is revealed. A hegemony that results, additionally, in the asymmetrical and power relations between doctors and the patients given assistance (Lima, 2018). According to Minayo (2001) one needs to resort to class sociology, not only in the study of health, but also in the study of any other wider theme of culture. Sarti and Melucci (1998), in a text discussing the importance of the social sciences for the health field, refer to other social cleavages, beyond class, which restrict the access by individuals to health, such as, specially, gender, race, ethnic background, religion, as well as cultural particularities. Donnangelo (1976) highlights the social class aspect in the differentiation of medical practice. For the author, this differentiated relation, given by class, gains specificity in capitalist societies. In such societies, the extension of medical practice by means of the quantitative widening of services and the increasing incorporation of populations into medical care is related, the author states, to the continuation of capitalist accumulation processes. This means seeking to provide health care to the worker only as it meets immediate economic goals, which do not involve the growing incorporation into medical care of social groups marginalised from the production process, Donnangelo (1976) ponders. The extension of medical practice, presently, in Western societies, implies the extension of medicine’s normativity. As Adam and Herzlich (2001) elaborate, contemporary problems are increasingly considered under the light of medical rationality, which grounds the normatisations. Thus, problems such as drugs, alcoholism, child abuse, among others, are medicalised more and more. In such medicalised societies, as defined by a few authors, among them Breton (2003; 2006) and Camargo Júnior (2003), fiscalist and normative arguments are increasingly deployed in the comprehension and definition of social problems. For Jane Russo (2006), in its preventive version, medicine exhorts people to live a prescribed and balanced life; a healthy life - according to moral concepts around the issue, the author stresses. Conceptions that prescribe an action on our bodies. For Donnangelo (1976), this body, sociologically speaking, is not limited to the physiological anatomical aspects, being, above all, an agent of work. To be ill in such societies, Adam and Herzlich (2001) argue, is to be absent from work. In a study made about representations of health and of the sick I © 2022 Global Journals Volume XXII Issue IX Version I 1 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2022 G Author α σ : Ph.d, University of São Paulo, Brazil. e-mails: re.oliveira@usp.br , Eunice.almeida@usp.br