Call for papers of dossier articles (37th edition, jul.-dec. 2022)
History of health in Latin America (16th to the 21st century): institutions, subjects, debates and practices
Natália Ceolin (Universidad de Salamanca, Espanha)
Rhaiane Leal (Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, Brasil)
It is not new for historians that the connections established between Latin American countries are not just due to territorial proximity. Political culture, pasts based on colonial experience, independence processes, populist governments and dictatorial contexts are some of the points of intersection established by historiography and by the dynamics that unfolded.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, these approximations became evident in the academic debate and in the media in general. It is true that the measures taken by these countries diverged significantly from each other and had their own local realities taken into account for government action in the fight against the Coronavirus. However, a similar factor that has drawn the attention of social scientists and historians is the way in which the region's social inequalities were revealed and accentuated in this context. This is a consequence that researcher Cueto (2020) attributes to neoliberal policies in dealing with public health.
In relation to health in Latin America, the field of historical research has undergone important renovations. Questions about the local character of medical science production affected the position of the, until that point dominant, Western sciences (Werner, Zimmermann, 2003) and opened the way to discover other realities of medicine. Cueto and Silva (2020) consider that there are four perspectives on the historiography of health in America, which are: “universalism”, “reception”, “international networks” and the “global turn”. Recent historiographical productions, influenced mainly by the last two perspectives, perceive Latin America from its complex dynamics and its leading role in the production of knowledge and medical practices. It is worth mentioning the work on a global approach by Steven Palmer (2015) and the work on the Theory of Circulation by Kapil Raj (2007) which surpassed the categories of “center” and “periphery” and dynamized national borders. They broke with diffusionist interpretations that considered the region as highly dependent on European knowledge, represented by the work The spread of western science by George Basalla published in the journal Science in 1967.
Thus, other practices, knowledge and subjects were perceived as subjects of study for the History of Health. Among them, indigenous knowledge about the use of medicinal herbs, homeopathic therapies, non-formal health care initiatives (Porter, 1999) and others trades linked to healing, such as barbers, nurses, bleeders and religious people. We consider that this change of scientific perspective in relation to Latin America is part of the advent of these new objects and research problems in historiography.
Taking into account the plurality of the field, the dossier History of Health in Latin America from the 16th to the 21st century opens a call for national and international students interested in the various possibilities of studies on the subject to contribute with their research. We highlight here the possibility of local, regional, national, comparative or global studies. To think about health institutions, subjects, debates and practices, the time frame was defined between the 16th and 21st centuries, from the conquest of the Americas to the present time.
We are aware that, due to the pandemic, historical investigations have been impacted in different ways. In a practical way, many researches were paralyzed because archives and libraries had their doors closed due to the health crisis. At the same time, it was possible to observe a certain increase in interest on the part of both historians and civil society in health studies from a historical perspective. Since, as Rosenberg's (1992) famous work clearly shows, facing a disease or epidemic is an opportunity to understand structural, political and economic problems.
Deadline for submission: April 30, 2022 (23:59, Brasília time, UTC/GMT -03:00)
