Sociology, Technology and Primary Healthcare – the Dilemmas of a New Paradigm

These notes outline the theoretical review chapter of a post doctor project about the information systems applied to the primary healthcare. The concepts and paradigms discussed in this chapter were draw of the work of Bruno Latour, Boltanski and Thèvenot.

The work show how key social science concepts and paradigms can be applied by researchers on studies about complexities generated by the introduction of the technologies of communication and information in healthcare. Some studies highlighted the introduction of these technologies provoked deeply changes on professional identities, doctor- patient relationships as well as on human- machine relationships.

The key contributions of this work is considering social system as one dynamic process in which humans and non- humans are always interacting, negotiating their interests and according new rules and behaviors. In these theories, humans and non- humans have similar capacity in terms of agency and of influence.

The authors believe that all individuals have the capacity to formulate the theories to support their choices. In this way, it is the responsibility of the analysts to follow them and to take the notes.

It has led to a lot of applications, some which will be exemplified in these notes: 1. Innovative conceptualization about role of humans and non- humans in social systems (both of them can change social systems through negotiation processes); 2. Actors are self-motivated; 3. Actors and objects can occupy positions of representative, influence or discordant voices (when an actor speaks for the network, he is occupying representative position); (when an actor influences another one in solving problems situation, he is occupying influence position); (when an actor´s claim provoke changes in network structure, he is occupying discordant positions); 4. The disputes show how the power is distributed between actors and what the tools of control used by them.