Paradigmas e práticas: Diálogos metodológicos da saúde urbana no Sul Global

Abstract

This dissertation proposes a critical and reflective approach to Urban Health, understood as a scientific field that encompasses multiple visions of the world, the city, and health. At the boundaries between these perspectives, research plays an important role in promoting and facilitating dialogue. Although research in the field of urban health was originally anchored in quantitative methods and the positivist paradigm, the complexity of urban and health problems has been highlighting the need to incorporate qualitative, participatory, intersectoral, and transdisciplinary approaches. To better understand and intervene more effectively in the urban dynamics that affect health, we propose to broaden the field’s perspectives from a Global South standpoint, valuing counter-hegemonic epistemologies and the social determination of health-disease processes, guided by Latin American Social Medicine and Public Health approach, complex thinking, and feminist urbanism. The different paradigms are understood as coexisting in creative tension, with the potential to promote innovative syntheses. Three studies conducted using participatory methodologies in intersectoral, transdisciplinary and international contexts are presented, highlighting the role of reflexivity and articulation between multiple perspectives that make up the field for the construction of shared knowledge. The dissertation thus proposes, based on the exploration of participatory methodologies, the expansion of the field of urban health, with ethical engagement in the promotion of health and Buen-vivir in cities of the Global South.