As revoltas do outono de 2005 na França constituem, para além dos estragos cometidos (menos significativos do que se supõe), um verdadeiro acontecimento, já que cristalizaram problemas presentes mas ainda não percebidos, e geraram um limite temporal a partir do qual a sociedade muda o olhar sobre si mesma. Uma possível interpretação do acontecimento apresenta dois níveis. De um lado, as circunstâncias que o desencadearam estão ligadas, como qualquer revolta ocorrida nos últimos 25 anos, a violências policiais que desestabilizaram a precária economia moral dos meios populares. De outro lado, os fenômenos subjacentes envolvem uma forma particular de desigualdade que, durante muito tempo, a sociedade francesa se recusou a admitir: as discriminações raciais.

The 2005 autumn riots in France may be considered a real event: it has given shape to issues not seen before as such yielding a time boundary which changed the way society regards itself. The suggested interpretation has two levels. On the one hand, the circumstances that have triggered off the events are related, as succeeds in any riots of the last 25 years, to police violence and the resulting unsettling in the precarious moral economy of the popular classes. On the other hand, the underlying phenomena are related to a particular form of inequality not acknowledge by French society: racial discriminations.

A PARTIR DE LA REVISIÓN DE LAS DIFERENTES CORRIENTES DE LA ANTROPOLOGÍA MÉDICA, el artículo define los desafíos teóricos y metodológicos que enfrenta la antropología en el campo de estudios de la salud. Por ello, la antropología política de la salud propone una distinción fundamental entre lo viviente y lo vivo, en tanto la salud no constituye un problema ideológico, sino que integra una lógica social más amplia. Por un lado, el desarrollo de nuevas tecnologías médicas y, por otro, la puesta en práctica de políticas estatales sobre seguridad social, condicionan el acceso a los servicios de salud, reflejando las relaciones de poder que pesan en el gobierno de la vida y de la enfermedad.

THROUGH A REVIEW OF RECENT TRENDS IN MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY, THIS ARTICLE defines the theoretical and methodological challenges faced by anthropology in the field of health studies. As such, the political anthropology of health posits a fundamental distinction between what lives and what is alive, given that health itself is not an ideological problem. Rather, it integrates broader social logics. On one hand, the development of new medical technologies, and on the other, the implementation of state policies regarding social security, condition access to health services, reflecting the existing power relations that weigh in on the government of life and disease.

During the recent years, social sciences have developed interest in the body, considering it as a social reality, a result of a historical construction and a product of cultural representations, but the political uses of the body have been relatively neglected. On the basis of two case-studies recently conducted in France, one on the distribution of subsidies to job-seekers, the other one on the legalization of undocumented immigrants for humanitarian reasons, the present paper analyzes the way in which the body becomes a resource for the claim of a right, justified by disease or suffering. These examples give clues for the comprehension of the moral economy of illegitimacy and the foundations for a political anthropology of the body.

Durante los últimos años, las ciencias sociales se han esforzado en captar al cuerpo como una realidad social, fruto de una construcción histórica y producto de representaciones culturales, pero se han dedicado menos al análisis de los usos políticos del cuerpo. Basándose en dos estudios de casos realizados recientemente en Francia, uno sobre la distribución de subsidios a desempleados y el otro sobre la regularización de los indocumentados en nombre de la razón humanitaria, el presente artículo analiza la manera en la que el cuerpo sirve de recurso para reivindicar un derecho, a título de la enfermedad o del sufrimiento. A través de estos ejemplos, se trata de comprender la economía moral de la ilegitimidad y de proponer una antropología política del cuerpo.