Saúde Maxakali, recursos de cura e gênero: análise de uma situação social

Abstract

This thesis analyzes, from a specific social situation, the articulation between the healing practices and the relations of gender in Maxakali groups indigenous people from the Valley do Mucuri, Minas Gerais, Brazil. It is an anthropological take on a social situation where Maxakali groups and the team of sanitary service of the National Heath Foundation (FUNASA) faced an epidemic children´s diarrhea. From the knowledge frameworks of both the Maxakali conceptions and those of Western medicine, the ethnographic study shows how the different subjects have dealt with the problem trying to achieve the improvement of the health condition of the population. Depending on the perspective assumed to understand the disturbances, it was observed that different resources for healing were used, showing the reciprocal dependence among the subjects and perceptions involved in this specific social situation.