Contributions of Maffesoli’s sensitive rationality to the foundations of territorial and community practices at the health care/social support interface

Abstract

Michel Maffesoli is known worldwide as a thinker of postmodernity, of tribalism as a new form of sociality and sensitive reason, within an emerging epistemic or paradigmatic change. Despite not reflecting on care practices, by bringing a sociological reading that highlights the domestic, localism and tribalism, and referencing health from the perspective of personal and social potency, this essay argues that the force-ideas extracted from his thought can contribute to the epistemological, ethical-political and theoretical-methodological foundations of the actions of professionals who work at the health care/social support interface and who act in the space-time of everyday life in a given territory. By presenting a logos that validates a sensitive reason and that takes the places of daily life as space-time of connections and development of potentialities, an ecosophical ethos of respect for people, nature and the diversity of forms and ways of life, his thought can also outline places of personal and collective dwelling, which can become scenarios of interdisciplinary and interprofessional care practices (praxis) in tune with a sensitive rationality, guided by and for the potentiation of life.