Configuração e difusão da cultura sespiana no Brasil 1942-1960: participação de enfermeiras e visitadoras sanitárias

Abstract

This is a historical-social research that had as its object the configuration and diffusion of Sespian culture in Brazil in the years 1942 to 1960. The objectives were: to describe the configuration, modus operandi of SESP and the culture that it imprinted on the Brazilian regions where operated and analyze the diffusion of Sespian culture as a civilizing process in health in Brazil. The sources were documentary and had as criteria for inclusion of the documents legibility and the fact that they could be photocopied. The information collected was supported by Norbert Elias' concepts of civilizing process, culture, configuration and behavior. The results showed that SESP was configured as a so-called modern public health model, which spread across the country through the action of professionals, teachers in primary schools, duly trained to transmit the new sanitary practices and dissemination through leaflets. magazines, newsletters and published books. Its services had a national demonstration effect, and its specialists became multiplier agents of the model in other institutions. The diffusion of Sespian culture throughout Brazil and its modus operandi had in the nurses an instrument of coercion, because, through the training and formation of the assistants/visitors and the supervision of the team, they ensured the success of the civilizing process, understanding that the visitors health services were carriers of a discourse that provoked "changes in behavior and feelings" (emphasis added) through the implantation of new habits, customs and daily practices. sanitary behavior and individual and collective conduct in relation to health and other aspects of the population's daily life. The analyzed sources and the information discussed in this study allowed us to state that the objectives were achieved, and that SESP developed a health policy that behaved as a civilizing process, spreading an American health culture considered superior to the Brazilian one by the actions of affirmation of the best hygienic practices, widely disseminated by advertising and by the participation of nurses and health visitors in pedagogical actions of health education, continuous training, training of health visitors who were disseminators of foreign culture, as well as by the actions of coercion and control exercised through supervision and collection of data recorded and reports by nurses in order to confirm the hypothesis presented in this study.