Identificador: TDX:1888
Autors: Navarro Valencia, Martha Cecilia
Resum:
The thesis is an interdisciplinary study using social anthropology, the sub-disciplineof health-anthropology, sociology, and gender studies in a case study of a populationof 20 afro-descendent women who live in precarious socio-economic conditions in thecity of Buenaventura, on the Colombian Pacific coast.The central subject is the analysis and description of the perceptions, uses andanswers of these women in face of the problems they experience in relation to the carethey receive regarding their reproductive health. These women use two dominanthealth systems in Buenaventura. These are: publicly funded biomedicine representedby public health professionals in the main city's hospital and traditional healthservices represented by empirical midwifes. The thesis considers those two systemsand describes the situations that lead these women to use one or the other healthsystem and at what point these two health systems are for them an alternative.The subjective experience of these women about the ways of sexual and reproductivehealth care, and also the statements from the other persons implied in the study -public health professionals and empiric midwifes - are reported. Ethnography is thecentral method for approaching the research problem. Archival research is also usedas well as some aggregate data.The theoretical framework is in the interpretative perspective. It departs from theassumption that the study subjects - the afro-descendent women of Buenaventurahavethe capacity of interpreting their circumstances, of adapting to them, ofmanaging them and giving them sense. Or, from the proposal of Berguer andLuckmann (1991) though the subjectivity of individuals reflects the socialdetermination in which they are immersed, it also expresses their interpretativeability. Society ascribes to individual according to specific characteristics, a meaning,roles and positions, though the individual does not always follows them. Anyway, thereaction of society to the modes of individual answer has a determinant role in the lifeof everyone of them.One of the research findings is the corroboration of two specific situations. One is thatthe Afro-Colombians are trapped in social practises where the increasingly medicatedpractise of the biomedical care system makes them more and more dependent on thepublic health system. Although this is the one they have the option to use, it is not analternative for those women as the public health system lacks access equality and doesnot offer specific programs for them. The consumption of patented medicinesbecomes increased through formal consultation or through diverse social experiencesin their urban environment.The other one refers to the traditional practises. When these women resort totraditional medicine of endogenous practises, they are not only referring to curativepowers, but to social and cultural beliefs, beyond pure biology.
Repositori URV