Contemporary issues concerning nature and culture: brief comments on public health and sociology in Brazil

Abstract

This article discusses some aspects of the relationship between the biological and the social object by focusing on the field of Public Health in Brazil and on the field of the social sciences, specifically sociology. It starts from the assumption that the concept that guides the field of Public Health, that of social determination (formulated in the mid-1970s and 1980s), was deeply marked by a certain reading of the social category, imbued with the classical theoretical framework of the social sciences and marked by the political-institutional environment in which the fields of Public Health and of the Social Sciences were historically. The aim is to discuss the exhaustion of this theoretical formulation in view of the profound changes that have occurred in contemporary societies in their late industrial, post-industrial or late-modern stage. It is believed that, with the discussion about the theoretical frameworks that constitute the field of Public Health, the health issues are tackled in a way that is consonant with the social changes that have occurred.