Um estudo antropológico sobre adoecer de malária na Comunidade do Livramento, Amazonas

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to understand the health / disease process and the ways of attention to malaria in the Nossa Senhora do Livramento Community, at the rural area of Manaus, Amazonas. This is an ethnographic job (the field work was realized during September 2009) and we connected the representations and practices about the sickness of malaria as a process in the particular context of the social organization of this community. This dynamic process is about the way that people think and act diant the occurrence of malaria. We use the concept of social representation, understood as the different kinds of cultural reference that explain and give meaning to malaria. Among these references, it s way that the medicine treat and explain the disease along the history and the ways wich the inhabitant of Livramento Community interact with the professionals of control and attendance of malaria. This different forms of understanding the disease coexist and are appropriated making sense in the social reality and context of life of Livramento people. The concept of therapeutic itinerary is used to understand handling process of these social-cultural references by observing the individual practices. In the Livramento Community the way of people understanding their own social reality has a direct influence with the ways of thinking and to act about the malaria and the health attendance.