This study aims to examine the relationship between social sciences and public health in Brazil privileging the role of sociologists and anthropologists who have placed themselves in the position of "translators" among health professionals and rural populations object of government action. Health education, sanitation, prevention and curative medicine, preventive medicine will be perceived as actions whose efficiency depends directly on the deep understanding of a more extensive and complex cultural universe than reality. That is the central position of social scientists in the planning of administrative actions aimed especially at the Brazilian rural population: their knowledge of the socio-cultural in nature should anticipate and guide any interventions.
Brazilian Social Thought; History of Social Sciences in Brazil; Special Service of Public Health; development; rural sociology