Based on the analysis of a set of interviews with leaders of terreiro communities, this paper discusses the possibilities of an “ecology of lore and knowledge” in health and, more specifically, the possibilities for interaction between the African matrix knowledge and Western scientific medicine knowledge. Along the way, through the engagement in a dialogue between the “conceptual imagination” of authors and the one of their African matrix interlocutors, the paper explores the possible results of an “ecologizing” process between those two types of knowledge, its presuppositions and the barriers to its fulfillment. In this sense, rather than a onesided theoretical approach to the subject, the article seeks to make visible and valuable the conceptual elaboration of the interviewed leaders, building its argument from a transcultural imaginative effort.
Ecology of knowledge in health; African matrix; Health equity; Brazilian National Health System