A saúde na perspectiva ético-política: pesquisa ação participante na Comuna da Terra Irmã Alberta do Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST)

Abstract

This study is a participatory action research (PAR) approach conducted with the Health Sector of the Movement of the Landless Rural Workers, known by its Portuguese acronym MST, from 2008 to 2011. During the process, this study aimed to transform the action developed through the PAR, according to the materialist and dialectical reference basis of the social-historical psychology, to better orient the actions in the light of the knowledge learnt from the relation and theoretical mediation toward the Movement objective for enhancing political action capability.The orienting conception of health is as proposed by Sawaia, which understands health as a whole, on the confluence of material, political, biological and ethical dimensions, when referring to the order of life power. Conditions experienced there (when living at the Irmã Alberta Commune of the Earth, where this study was conducted) were chosen as focus for this study reflecting the dialectic between life power and emancipation and ethical-political suffering, consequences and bondage power. In other words, the aim was to understand the forces, which prepare the grounds for the ethical and political health condition, or the possibility of existing in act and the assessment of what inhibits this power in the construction process of Irmã Alberta Commune. To assess the affectivity dynamics and its interconnection in the health-disease process, having as basis the social-historical perspective of Vygostky, the philosophy of Espinosa and the considerations of discussions carried out on the Nucleus on the Psychosocial Study of Social Inclusion Exclusion Dialectics (NEXIN).The study counted on forty nine individual interviews as well as reports and a field diary drawn up to find its language subtext. The meaning units found were: work, land, study/education, communitarian organization and political actions. Although living under precarious conditions, with health problems as a consequence of the nonregulation of land ownership, and the lack of governmental resources and public policies for health as well as for land reform, we could observe achievements and capabilities to face difficulties encouraging them to be and exist, in act, and promoting their own transformation as well as of the society, with political actions playing an enhancing role in this context, especially in what concerns land occupations