Introduction:

Health research has been dominated by the positivist paradigm and, on a smaller scale, by the phenomenological tendency. The article presents the theses and characteristics of these interpretations, its implications for health knowledge and its diagnosis, as well as the contributions and aspects that the perspective of the Latin American social determination contains toward the understanding of health complexity and movement.

Development:

The theoretical discussion about the health-disease process, within the framework of social determination: its dimensions and relationships, at the interface between health, environment and society, and the role played by critical thinking in overcoming the limitations of positivism, reconsidering the construction of health as an object of knowledge and action, in a dispute to go beyond the functionalist framework towards the construction of an emancipatory vision of the health and environmental sciences.

Conclusions:

The Latin American perspective has systematically contributed to the construction of a complex and emancipatory health proposal disputed in various fields: research, action, politics and the state.

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