Abstract

This paper deals with a theoretical perspectives that, viewing health and sickness as expressions of structural, social and cultural processes of collectivities, explores interethnic contexts. First, a critique of how health is viewed in classic epidemiology, as part of the hegemonic clinical model, is addressed. Then, the theoretical perspective of social medicine is synthesized. It is viewed as a set of knowledge from which new concepts and actions in health can be canied out in interethnic contexts.