Paper short abstract:

The diversity of therapeutic agencying among traditional people in the Island of Itaparica, in the Bay of Todos os Santos, Bahia, Brazil, involves, in one hand, a heterogeneity of mediators from public health system and religious therapeutic care, and in another hand, the high vulnerability of population segments who face the risks posed by partial insertion in processes of modernization and globalization.

Paper long abstract:

The approach which is taken in the ideas that we discuss in the paper are supported by the theoretical concept of agencying (agencement) by Gilles Deleuze and Bruno Latour and defends the idea that healing practices and performances are characterized for heterogeneity of mediators in everyday life. If we understand religious healing traditions as a rooted, but not frozen knowledge, we are able to pursuit the dynamic of relations between public health system and religious therapeutic care. In another hand, we have taken the concept of vulnerability as a main form of examining how the traditional people in the Island of Itaparica, face the contemporary changes and risks, and how they affect the health seeking behaviors. For this purpose, vulnerability is understood as the major or minor capacity of self-management of those populations affected by the processes of modernization, which will occur when exogenous transformations "turn into" endogenous transformations.