Tesis sobre antropología médica y su impacto social

Medical Anthropology and Epidemiology: towards a greater understanding and normalization of the social phenomenon of drug use

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Thesis article Master’s degree in Medical Anthropology, 2010.

Keywords: Medical Anthropology, Epidemiology, cocaine consumption, drug user’s movement, community involvement

This article proposes a theoretical analysis on the application of qualitative techniques fear part of the Medical Anthropology the study on health problems and particularly in the field of the consumption of drugs or psychoactive substances (SPA). At the same time, it necessarily proposes a common working space between Medical Anthropology and other Health Sciences (specifically Medicine and Epidemiology). The articulation of the approaches (micro and macro social), characteristic of the socio-anthropological analysis applied to the study of the phenomena of cocaine use and other drugs, can contribute strategic data to the discourse and the foundations of intervention on drugs and health in general, as well as broaden the theoretical knowledge in this respect from Medical Anthropology and from the qualitative techniques of social research, proposing and claiming a space of complementarity and not subalternity with respect to epidemiology or other health sciences.