The purpose of the study was to analyze the repercussion of a training program in gerontological health promotion addressed to senior citizens in a rural area in Mexico. The impact of the program was examined at two levels: first, with regard to the development of specific practices relating to primary health care and to the actual implementation of community health programs and, second, through the interpretive analysis of bodily inscriptions in the participants. Results gave evidence of a gradual empowering process among the elderly health promoters who consistently developed a position of responsibility and autonomy regarding the control of their lives and, at the same time, an increasingly open critical attitude with regard to the social role ascribed to them by the community. Furthermore, the knowledge, sense of and meanings that operated on the significant practices of the participants were consistently determined by the extent of their social capital and habitus. It was important to note that the intervention research program did not lead to permanent changes in the participants' habitus, whereas their main effects were associated to a greater consolidation of social support networks and to the acquisition of a salient position in their community given the symbolic cultural capital that represented having obtained an official certification. To conclude, a diversity of outcomes was evident in the participants as a result of the intervention program, depending on their personal biographies, social and cultural capitals, and on their particular positions within their community.

The biomedical scientific institution is one principal cogwheel for the meanings construction neoliberal machine. Despite the official recognition of the social determinants of disease by the medical institution, critical social sciences are not taken seriously in this field where the tolerated social sciences paradigm is positivistic, looking for biological answers and 'hard' evidence to embodied social problems. In this paper I look at the chances of critical social sciences to affect the medical field in present neoliberal context. I argue that, at present time, it seems not possible for a progressive critical social sciences to effectively penetrate the medical field. This is not to say that critical social sciences have not chance at all to penetrate the health culture. I sketch then some possibilities to penetrate the health culture pinpointing out the role of Qualitative Inquiry in this quest.

Podríamos ubicar a la promoción de la salud entre las prácticas sociales sustantivas de la existencia y vida humana. Desde que fuimos clan, las prácticas de construcción de las palabras, de creación de proyectos, las de los centinelas oteando el entorno, las religiosas protectoras o de celebración, las de producción y transmisión de saberes y prácticas que permitieron la vida cotidiana, las de selección de alimentos y hierbas curativas, las de fijación de las historias en paredes, la construcción de herramientas y utensilios, de acompañamiento del parto, nombrar a los nuevos miembros del grupo, imaginar maneras de enterrar a los muertos o cultivar el fuego, entre otras muchas prácticas, fueron maneras en que los humanos cuidamos de nosotros(as) mismos(as) y de cada miembro del clan, reuniendo nuestros poderes y permitiendo así la vida colectiva. A esas prácticas nos debemos.

A partir de los argumentos de que la formación y uso actual de la investigación en salud es dominantemente positivista y que se “corporeiza” en los investigadores; de que la manera en la que se ha investigado la salud no da cuenta de su complejidad y que la investigación positivista en salud se convierte en obstáculo epistemológico para mejorar el entendimiento de la salud, en este artículo presento cuatro desafíos y un conjunto de posibilidades para remontar la corporeización positivista a favor del desarrollo de la investigación cualitativa iberoamericana en el campo de la salud, la enfermedad y la atención.

Weaving together some historical, collective, and personal threads, I focus mainly on the trajectory of the marks neoliberal policies had printed on the Mexican and Latinoamerican Public University. I examine some polices, spaces, and forms of academic research before and in neoliberal contexts. Then I examine how those policies have been outstanding capitalist dispositifs undermining critical and social justice-oriented higher education and research. I conclude that, very much like in the National Museum of Brazil in 2018, neoliberal policies and practices of debt set fire to the Latinoamerican Public University challenging Public University ideals.