Ecology of knowledge and cognitive justice for health promotion: health in the Terreiro communities.

Abstract

This article intends to explore the logics that produce 'non-existence' to imagine how the Health Promotion could take advantage of the experience of the Terreiros to produce more health and social justice. The interest in addressing the scarcely explored cultural determinants of health was in the background of this survey, which assumes the diversity as a positive producer of alternatives. The interest in an 'ecology of knowledge' led to an imaginative transcultural effort to address the contemporary problem of the growth or intensification of discrimination and religious intolerance practices. In this survey, we interviewed Terreiros leaders and primary healthcare professionals to know their perceptions about the relationship between religion and health. The article presents the results in three parts. In the first part, we describe some of the findings of our research, which explain how Terreiros conceive health, since this is the subject highlighted to do an 'ecology of knowledge'. In the second part, we highlight a component of care in the Terreiros: the welcoming. In the third part, in order to perform a comparison exercise, or an operationalization of the 'ecology of knowledge', we present an example of user embracement in primary healthcare. We conclude that if we wish to act with cognitive justice in the construction of the better healthcare, a path is to associate the principle of participation, which informs the Health Promotion, with the proposal of 'ecology of knowledge'.