Body practices as biopolitics and biopower devices in Primary Health Care

Abstract

This work aimed to analyze how body practices can serve as instruments to control bodies in
Primary Health Care, evaluating the speeches of health professionals of a Basic Health Unit based on the concepts of biopower and biopolitics raised by Michel Foucault. This is a qualitative study, characterized as a case study. Five focal groups were carried out, with the Extended Family Health and Primary Care Center team and four as Family Health Teams. Thematic Analysis was used to approve the data. The research reveals that body practices continue to be a biomedical tool, aimed at prevention, control and treatment of diseases, focusing on chronic non-communicable diseases. Such practices end up configuring biopower and biopolitics devices in Primary Health Care, as body control and as strategic components of a social medicalization. However, in the end, it also points to the possibilities of resistance exercises and fissures of power relations established in body practices, taking these as a power to recreate other senses in addition to those hegemonic ones based on biologicist discourses.