Abstract

LOPES, Noémia Mendes. Automedicação: algumas reflexões sociológicas. Sociologia, Problemas e Práticas [online]. 2001, n.37, pp.141-165. ISSN 0873-6529.

This article, which is based on an ongoing research project, offers some sociological thoughts about self-medication. They represent a first step towards taking an analytical look at this phenomenon and to constituting it as an object for sociological study. A first line of thought weighs up the professional power strategies that are developing around self-medication and seeks to show the social transmutations which it is currently experiencing. Then some of the empirical data that the article has analysed are used to see the phenomenon as an expression of the ways in which laypeople are appropriating professional know-how - a process that reveals some different appropriation formats and social perceptions of risk, which vary from one social group to another. Lastly the author weighs up a set of theoretical contributions that she uses to interpret the analytical clues that she has found in her work.

Keywords : Forms of self-medication; laymen’s perceptions of risk; laymen’s know-how; professional strategies.

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