Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

We analyze the provision of care to women experiencing gender-based violence within two Primary Health Care units located in a peripheral area of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It focuses on the narratives and practices of “street-level bureaucrats,” agents who operate at the interface between users and the State. The methodological procedures adopted included participant observation of care-related activities and semi-structured interviews with professionals between 2022 and 2023. In their daily work within Primary Health Care, these agents often face challenges such as inadequate infrastructure and lack of integration within the care network, which necessitate discretionary actions in various situations. The actions of these public agents can either facilitate or hinder access to health services, directly influencing the critical pathways in the care provided to women. The analysis considers that the experiences of these operators, along with the complex interactions between institutional and social aspects, are crucial for understanding the field of public policies aimed at addressing gender-based violence and the limitations encountered in their implementation.

This essay uses the notion of enchantment to build an anti-racist and decolonial dialogue with the field of mental health and psychosocial care. It problematizes the racist foundations that produce the silencing, erasure, and homogenization of experiences within the Psychiatric Reform and the Anti-Asylum Struggle in Brazil and highlights the need to utilize quilombola (inhabitant-like) as a guiding component of the ethical-political dimension and the construction of a clinical-political praxis that empowers life and produces enchantment. From an intersectional, decolonial, Marxist feminist perspective, three problematizing questions are raised: the urgency of the enchantment of Psychiatric Reform and the Anti-Asylum Struggle; quilombola (inhabitant-like) as a component of the ethical-political dimension; the clinical practice of delicacy as praxis. In this sense, the essay aims to instigate debate by bringing new perspectives to the field of mental health, proposing another theoretical, political and clinical approach to psychosocial care based on Afro-diasporic experiences. 

Eduardo Sá Barreto é professor associado no Departamento de Economia e no Programa de Pós-graduação em Economia da Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF), e pesquisador do Núcleo Interdisciplinar de Estudos e Pesquisas sobre Marx e o Marxismo (Niep-Marx). Possui doutorado e mestrado em Economia pela UFF e graduação em Ciências Econômicas pela Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG). É autor dos livros Ecologia Marxista Para Pessoas Sem Tempo (Usina Editorial, 2022); O Capital na Estufa: Para a Crítica da Economia das Mudanças Climáticas (Editora Consequência, 2019); Marxism in the Age of Ecological Catastrophe: Theory and Praxis (Editora Routledge, 2024); entre outros, com temas relacionados à crise ecológica, crítica da economia política, história do pensamento econômico e filosofia da ciência. Nesta entrevista, Eduardo aborda o ecossocialismo como contrapartida à crise do Capital. Imagem: Larissa Guedes(EPSJV/FIOCRUZ)

MAIA, João R.; REIS, José R. F.; CRUZ, Leandra B. (org.). Pensar a loucura: trilhas literárias, culturais, históricas. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Fiocruz, 2023, 312 p.

While Smith does not explicitly refer to autonomy, it has been argued that in the Smithean individual there is a place for agency and self-determination, as portrayed in the Theory of Moral Sentiments. In this paper, I contend that the Smithian perspective on moral action encompasses self-interest and a relational perspective of the formation of morality as integral components of autonomy. This conceptualization bears resemblance to the notion of relational autonomy as expounded in care ethics. In Smith’s framework, morality is a product of societal interactions facilitated by the sympathetic process and the impartial spectator, that lead individuals to emerge as moral subjects. The interplay of sympathy, self-interest, society, and the conception of the individual as delineated in TMS could provide a robust foundation for a theory of relational autonomy that integrates the social, as care ethics proposes, and that does not sacrifice justice and individual rights.

In his text Die Frage nach dem Ding, Heidegger offers an analysis of Kant’s thought that highlights the role of sensible intuition. This constitutes a shift in focus from his interpretation in Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, where transcendental imagination is the center of attention. In this paper, I provide an analysis of the reason for this change, suggesting that it is linked to an intensification of Heidegger’s concern for human finitude in relation to the notion of “creation”, which in turn responds to the fact that, by the mid-1930s, Heidegger realizes that thinking of being as the a priori carries a danger. This lies in the fact that being thus thought can detach itself from what is given in everyday experience and become determined by pure reason alone, thus turning into a representation against experience, characteristic of modern scientific thinking and whose ultimate aspiration is the creation of existence.