Between religion and the State: the case of the Expo Promo Salud events in the province of Buenos Aires

Abstract

Religions have historically established ways to regulate the lives of their followers, impacting conceptions of wellbeing and health. Likewise, state agencies have incorporated a more complex definition of health, including a lack of bodily illness, stability, and social, psychological, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. Using the category of care in a broad sense, we seek to put these conceptualizations into tension in order to identify points of agreement and discrepancy among the ways of defining health and wellbeing by state and religious agents. Using a qualitative approach, content analysis of documents, participant observation and formal and informal interviews with state and religious agents were carried out in the framework of two events held in 2016 and 2017 by the Buenos Aires Provincial Office of Religions under the name Expo Promo Salud. These events were generated to make visible the actions carried out by religions in the area of health in general and problematic drug use in particular. In this way, the article seeks to analyze the ways of discursively defining care, health and wellbeing and their possible impact on the design of public policies.

Keywords

• Religión
• Promoción de la Salud
• Bienestar Social
• Estado
• Argentina