The article discusses the concept of "buccality" as an expression of social works performed by the human mouth. The reference was the social theory of health (within the field of collective health), focused on social relations and related conflicts. The author situates the theoretical and practical problems faced by collective health as those of its scientificity and the specific way the field participates in social reproduction. He also considers the field's current limits in the collective organization of healthcare as an effect of neo-liberal policies. Problems arising from the concept of collective buccal health were seen as having the same nature and can only be faced using analytical categories from collective health or the social theory of health. The field's scientificity is reiterated by highlighting its proximity with the human sciences, which requires an epistemological repositioning, i.e., its shift from the biomedical terrain and abandonment of the notion of paradigm. Its essential instability is emphasized, characterized in the object and not the method. Finally, the author draws attention to the constitution of "extra-discursive" health structures based on their inclusion among the State's Ideological Apparels, in which the narrative's guiding thread is the critique of ideology.
Public health; Buccality; Epistemology