"Xilala is only treated with a good hand": a study on the treatment of malnutrition in Mozambique.

In Mozambique old and new evils of body and spirit intertwine, thus allowing particular contours to modern life. Traditional diseases are reconfigured along the lines of a new thinking, and what Western medicine calls malnutrition is defined as xilala by the local traditional thinking. This study aimed to understand the point of view of both caregivers (mothers and grandmothers) of children participating in a Nutritional Rehabilitation Program and ethnomedicine experts, who find themselves entangled in a complex set of relationships through which different forms to comprehend body, health, and disease circulate.

[Maternity and breastfeeding: identity, body and gender].

Breastfeeding is a multifaceted phenomenon involving the complexity of the social world, the roles assumed by women, their attributes and social expectations. This theoretical essay proposes a reflection on motherhood, problematizing the experience of breastfeeding and the construction of social identity in line with Anselm Levi Strauss's sociological concepts of interactionism. This article sought to make associations between body, identity, and socialization processes in adulthood, generated by new social demands in fulfilling the roles of woman and mother, focusing on the breastfeeding experience.