AS BENZEDEIRAS NA TECITURA DA CULTURA, RELIGIÃO E MEDICINA POPULARES

Abstract

The aim of this research is identify the socio-anthropological locus of the figure of healers within the historical process of their human relationships with the culture, religion and medicine institutional. This research is justified by the fact that the healers are a kind of cultural and religious artefact worthy of scientific study. The main obstacle is to understand, the historical condition of such agents, how their practices non- bureaucratic way and under what conditions the healers and the search for such practices are present today. The premise basic is the possibility that the practices of healing are social phenomena of diffusion and accommodation end cultural processes such as assimilation and enculturation from popular strongholds. Thus, the healing would then be a way of rationalizing the world, supposing that, official institutions do not have enough elements to give meaning to daily representations of the people who make use of them. As for the methodology, it is an empirical-bibliographic approach, which made it possible to qualify the subjects from their cultural actions, popular religious and therapeutic practices. The analysis of the relations between the concepts "popular" and "official" situated in the current context of rationality, in which the healers carry out their practices. Is pointed out as a result or product, the realization that despite the strong presence of rationalized and official practices in modernity, the healers and their blessings are shown to be appropriate in such a sociocultural context.