Ciencias Sociales y Salud: Pre-textos para el Debate

Abstract

(1) Science consists only of quantitative observations:-(From an epidemiology text) "However full of insight an investigator´s considerings may be, they are unlikely, if not supported by observations objectively recorded in quantitative terms, to form a basis for the considerings of successive generations of investigators (MacMahon and Pugh 1970:6). (2) Social Science does not produce such observations.-(From a historical review of epidemiology) "Exploitation of the relationship between social and biological factors is inhibited as much as anything by the failure of the social sciences to provide data comparable to those of the biological sciences, data susceptible to statistical analysis" (Gordon 1952:126). (3) Anthropology is as much art as science, and should not produce quantifiable observations-(From an eminent reviewer of British social anthropology) "The implication of my present essay is quite the reverse; the data wich derive from fieldwork are subjective and not objective. I am saying that every anthropological observer, no matter how welll he/she has been trained, will see something that no other such observer can recognize, namely a kind of harmonic projection of the observer´s own personality. And when these observations aréwritten upín monograph or any other form, the observer´s personality will again distort any purported´objectivity´.purported´objectivity´. So what should be don e? Nothing. Antropological texts are interesting in themselves an not because they tell us something about the external world" (Leach 1984:22) 2. La relación de la salud como objeto de estudio y las ciencias sociales como cuerpos disciplinarios, en muchos aspectos aún está en proceso de construcción, aun cuando en algunos otros ha alcanzado cierto proceso de maduración. Si bien estas discusiones han generado largas controversias desde el siglo XIX, donde Foucault sitúa el comienzo de la posibilidad de convertir al ser humano y la sociedad en objetos de estudio, y con ello de las ciencias sociales y las de la salud 3 , cada cierto tiempo parece necesario renovar el debate y volver a posicionarse ante esta polémica, a la luz de las necesidades de investigación y de