A Glance at the Good Practices of Nursing in Primary Care - Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem

a) Geopolitical territory of production and reproduction of life and work as a setting of GPNuPC

Although several actions happen at home, and at the Basic Health Unit, geopolitical territory is the primary focus of GPNuPC. A territory or geopolitical space is where life is produced and therefore is where health needs and vulnerabilities appear. Vulnerabilities concern social groups, not risks. Risks focus on the understanding of individuals, normally targeting exclusively the biological and psychological body. However, the clinic is not about biological and psychological body only, as Foucault mentioned in “The Birth of the Clinic”⁽⁾. The clinical body is seen upside down in the territory, in other words, by identifying individuals in the sphere of social production and reproduction, their participation in social groups in the historically organized society, until reaching individuals and their families⁽⁾. It is usually asked “in what geopolitical territory has this practice taken place?” In order to answer this question I need to know how social production and reproduction, political geography and environmental geography in this territory are. We need to know what epidemiological profile of different social groups living in that territory, municipality or a district of the municipality is. So, I actually need to go back. What drives the economy of the place? Who are these people? Where are they from? What are their ethnic and class origins? What are their jobs? What are their work relationships? Do not they have work relationships? Are they farmers? Do they possess large lands? Are they landowners? Are they owners of small companies, like the ones that manufacture hot-dog stands? Are they owners of hot-dogs stands or are they working for a company? Lastly, it is necessary to know how these people live and work, as part of life; and, moreover, how this has been historically taking place in the territory, the geopolitical history of the place; the history of social production of the place; and the social reproduction history of the place (consumption). That is why, instead of picturing the place, we need to know a little bit of how things work, like a movie, to say if this movie will end up well or bad, or if the contradictions brought about by subalternity of class, gender, ethnicity and generation are such that reality will change, but if there is no planned collective, and directed intervention to the individuals’ autonomy, the objective reality may still be most difficult in people’s lives.

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