Reverberations of medicalization: infoscapes and informational trajectories in performance consumptions

Este artigo discute a relação entre fontes de informação e práticas sociais no domínio do consumo de medicamentos e outros produtos para fins de performance. Situando-a no quadro das paisagens informacionais contemporâneas, analisa como a pluralidade de fontes que as compõem vão sendo articuladas em trajetórias informacionais, na organização de práticas e disposições de consumo. Essas trajetórias permitirão explorar a diversidade de vias pelas quais se difunde esta lógica social de consumo, relevando o seu entroncamento e suas implicações nos processos de medicalização e nos contextos de ação dos indivíduos. Esta discussão tem como suporte empírico resultados de um estudo de âmbito nacional sobre consumos de performance na população jovem em Portugal.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The training of geologists: the role of universities in the configuration of the professional field

This article discusses the role played by universities in structuring the knowledge domains that configure different occupations in the professional field of Geology. Among the various dimensions that shape a profession, the appropriation of an expertise and its application in professional practice prevails as a central dimension. The article is based on an empirical analysis of the professional field of geology in Portugal, which includes the areas of Geology and Geological Engineering and Mining Engineering. The analysis shows how the educational offer is related with the transformations in the labour market and the strategic reposition of the professional groups in the field, contributing to its hybridisation.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

O natural e o farmacológico: padrões de consumo terapêutico na população portuguesa

Neste artigo identifcam-se os padrões de consumo terapêutico na população portuguesa, visando dar conta de um novo padrão emergente nas sociedades modernas, aqui designado de Pluralismo Terapêutico, noção com a qual se categoriza o uso conjugado ou alternado de recursos farmacológicos e naturais nas trajetórias terapêuticas dos indivíduos. O respetivo suporte empírico decorre de uma investigação, já concluída, que teve por base uma amostra nacional representativa. Os resultados mostram uma dualização dos consumos terapêuticos que é constituída por um padrão dominante de Farmacologismo – i.e., uso exclusivo de fármacos – coexistente com uma tendência crescente de pluralismo terapêutico. O efeito das fontes de informação terapêutica e dos seus usos leigos, bem como das perceções sociais de risco sobre o natural e o farmacológico, constitui neste estudo uma referência analítica central para a interpretação dos padrões encontrados

Medications, youth therapeutic cultures and performance consumptions: a sociological approach

This article analyses performance consumptions among young people. The theme is explored along two main axes. The first concerns the social heterogeneity in this field, considered on two levels: the different purposes for those investments - cognitive/mental and physical performance; and the different social contexts - university and work - where performance practices and dispositions may be fostered. The second axis explores the roles of pharmacological and natural consumptions, and their interrelationship, in the dissemination of these practices. The empirical data for this analysis were drawn from an ongoing research project on performance consumptions among young people (aged 18-29 years) in Portugal, including both university students and young workers without university education. The results correspond to the stage of extensive research, for which a questionnaire was organised at a national level, using non-proportional quota sampling. On the one hand, they show that (a) there is a hierarchy of acceptance of consumptions according to their purposes, with cognitive/mental performance showing higher acceptance and (b) both pharmaceuticals and natural products are consumed for every type of performance investment. On the other, the comparison between students and workers introduces a certain heterogeneity in this general backdrop, both in terms of the purposes for their consumptions and their opting for natural or pharmacological resources. These threads of heterogeneity will prompt a discussion of the dynamics of pharmaceuticalisation within the field of performance, in particular how therapeutic cultures may be changing in terms of the way individuals relate to medications, expanding their uses in social life