Abstract

OLARTE-JARAMILLO, Mª. del Rosario. HEALTH AND DISEASE, TWO CULTURAL CONSTRUCTIONS. Biosalud [online]. 2018, vol.17, n.1, pp.67-79. ISSN 1657-9550.  https://doi.org/10.17151/biosa.2018.17.1.7.

This text proposes a reflective look at the social representations that people without professional training build around issues of health and disease as natural facts of life. It critiques the industrialization-institutionalization the States do these basic aspects of life and the lack of connection of people with their abilities to change the course of their health or disease states. Also, language is analyzed as an essential communication instrument and as an inherent act of the human being, from which ideas and feelings are transmitted to weave complex systems of meaning and action in the world. This paper presents a selection and review of some documents elaborated in different Health Promotion World Conferences, studies of social representations as knowledge construction accepted by a community and understood as metaphors of culture and specialized literature in the field of Communication in Health (CIH) or Health Communication (HC). The central approach is that the subjectivities that people construct from their life histories affect their health or illness and it is the constructions of meaning that contribute to these situations, a social approach that must be reflected in the health promotion and prevention programs.

Keywords : communication; cultural device; health; disease; biopower.

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