Differences As Social Assets: Knowledge Emerging from Sociologists' Experiences in the Training of Health Professionals

In social theory, the concept of the border has evolved from being merely a line to becoming a space between margins. It has shifted from being an arbitrary, metaphorical, and abstract construction to an arbitrary-objective, metaphorical-existential, and abstract-concrete. The border has become a third space, a territory of ambivalence, "borderlands," and a place of "betweeners." Thus, it is no longer the point where something ends but rather the point from which something begins to be present. Consequently, borders are inhabited, and border knowledge is constructed. The aim of this article is to discuss the knowledge that emerges from the border experiences of sociologists involved in the training of health professionals. The territory formed between the fields of sociology and health constitutes a border space, within which significant practices and interactions of meanings are identified. This space presents theoretical and practical challenges for sociology within the health field, such as: identifying and problematizing differences, fostering ambivalences, discuss autonomy, rejecting submission, integrating opposites, "trans-forming" meanings, "inter-acting" codes, and problematizing epistemic injustices, among others. In this border space, differences can be viewed as opportunities and can become synonymous with social assets, which can significantly contribute to the training within the health field. Openness to contingency can invite epistemic-hermeneutic shifts, allowing for an active discernment of how power relations function in the health field. Moreover, problematizing the existence of essence in all things and relationships can lead to the deterritorialization of regimes of truth, introducing the temporality of the indeterminate, the relational, the impermanent, and the principle of uncertainty. However, in conclusion, there is no guarantee that the knowledge emerging from sociologists' pedagogical experiences in the health field will be sufficient for the construction of sociology with health.