Alimentación salud y cultura - SANHISO C. International health and ...

AlimentAción, sAlud y culturA: encuentros interdisciplinAres
state of affairs would implicate changes in the emotional and corporal
dispositions connected to the practice of taking care for others – a
complex set of values and sensibilities that mothers and housewives
experienced during a long period of their lives when their children
depended on them. Certainly, a very difficult lesson to learn if we
consider the condition of being alone as the experience of people
that, during a great part of their lives, mobilized themselves, their bodies,
and their own way of being in the social life, with values through
which they were oriented to the care of the other, to the assistance
and support of the relatives, especially of the children.
The study of Sarti (2005) about the poor people’s morality in a
neighborhood of São Paulo, Brazil, points out that «the family, considered
as a moral order, constitutes the mirror that reflects the image
with which poor people order and give sense to the social world»
(p.22) 11 . For the author, the family is based on a principle of moral obligation
with which their members are defined as committed amongst
themselves: «... the members of the family are those on whom one can
count, that is to say, those who reciprocate, those, therefore, to whom
one has obligations» (p.85).
The author emphasizes the diffuse character of the family moral
obligation, since the reciprocity is not ruled by the explicit interest
or by the immediate exchange, but by the trust (p.86). In this context
«... the parents that bring the children up and take care of them are
worthy of deep retribution, being a sign of ingratitude if one does not
recognize the obligation» (sarti, 2005:82).
The moral pattern drawn by Sarti (2005) is very close to the one
that characterizes the family relationships experiences of the researched
group. The diabetics are urged to reform the forms of being
which predisposed them to the commitment to the moral obligations
of the family as a collective project. The professionals that guide on
the diabetes cares evoke a new involvement pattern in the social relationships,
which one implicates the pre-eminence of the care of
the self. The practices of the diabetes’ care - the eating habits, the
schedules of the medicines and the monitoring of blood glucose index
- establish, in the referred social situations, the emphasis in the
self instead of the emphasis on the other.
11 All the citations of Sarti (2005) were translated by the author.
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