NON-GRADUATED DENTISTS IN BRAZIL

Abstract

Introduction: The work Dentistas Práticos no Brasil, organized by Cristiana Leite Carvalho and Cristine Maria Warmling, constitutes a dense contribution to the History of Science and Health. The book's introduction deconstructs traditional corporatist narratives of dentistry by demonstrating that the transition from the empirical craft of non-graduated dentists to the monopoly of degreed dental surgeons was not a natural evolution, but rather a process marked by social exclusion and market closure. The authors use frameworks from the Sociology of Professions and Foucault's post-structuralism to map how the university degree functioned as an instrument of power and how the modern State disciplined bodies through a hygienist device. This social closure ultimately created a severe sanitary vacuum in the interior of the country. This dynamic reflects the very consolidation of capitalism and the social division of labor on the national stage. Conclusion: The eradication of non-graduated dentists reveals how the anatomy of Brazilian dentistry was shaped by the needs of capital reproduction. This mechanism consolidated the commercialization of health, transforming oral care into a restricted commodity and leaving structural marks of historical negligence on the working classes.