Até a saúde tem seus efeitos colaterais : significado de doença e cura entre adeptos de terreiros de Umbanda

Abstract

This ethnography is the result of research on ―health and Umbanda‖, carried out between the years 2022 and 2023. The field carried out, within the terreiros, was divided between Terreiro de Umbanda Sagrada and Terreiro de Umbanda Esotérica, led by Pai Ernesto and Dona Glory, respectively. From participant observation I was able to organize the categories that Umbanda followers (priests, consulence and entities) use to classify symptoms and illnesses. These categories were endowed with meanings and meanings so that they could support some statements that will be defended throughout the thesis: Umbanda is a complex health system that accounts for several principles of the SUS (universality, integrality and humanization), its construction of ―health‖ is completely collective, religious experience modifies the place that subjects occupy in the world and that, in the dispute with biomedical discourse, Umbanda does not allow itself to be ―tutored‖ by this logic, transforming biomedical discourse as its component. The ethnographic data point to a movement towards the centralization of health care towards the Umbanda model and directs biomedical care as enhancers, escaping the ―alternative‖ or ―complementary‖ logic attributed by the hegemonic discourse. However, the resulting and significant tensions that emerge from these discourses are analyzed and composed to clarify what the meaning of health is for followers of Umbanda terreiros.