Bodies and Tales. Grounds for an Interdisciplinary Exchange between Medical and Social Sciences

Health is a field of study of a large set of disciplines. Biomedical disciplines have an essential role, but alongside them also, social sciences, particularly sociology and anthropology, play an essential part in the study of care relations and the reconstruction of the subjective experiences of health and illness. The cohabitation of these two scientific communities in the same field, that of health, meets some difficulties due to the differences in the epistemic styles and how each community defines the proper way to produce evidence. This implies troubles in the reciprocal recognition and some difficulties of communication. This essay analyzes two independent and parallel movements that characterize these disciplinary contexts, which offer an essential occasion for an interdisciplinary exchange: namely, the emergence in the field of social science of the body and that of narration in the biomedical field. In both cases, attention will be directed to the most recent transformations, that have their roots in the last century, and that – at least in this writer’s eyes – have had a decisive impact in shaping both the outlook (the epistemic dimension) of each discipline and the forms of collaboration between them (the political dimension.