Representações sociais da COVID-19 e repercussões para o cuidado de si e do outro

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the social representations of COVID-19 among people who contracted and did not contract the disease, and their repercussions on self-care and care for others, in light of the Theory of Social Representations, in its procedural and structural aspects, and Michel Foucault's thought on care as an ethical and political practice of freedom. This is a qualitative, descriptive, and analytical study, based on the psychosocial framework of Serge Moscovici, developed with 146 participants residing in the Amazon Region. Data collection occurred through the Free Word Association Technique and semi-structured interviews, processed by the EVOC and Alceste software. The results revealed that the representations of COVID-19 are configured as dynamic, shared, and affectively invested constructions, sustained by collective memories of crisis, media discourses, and daily protection practices. In the central core, common to both groups, the elements of fear, anxiety, death, and pandemic emerged, expressing the tension between the biological and the symbolic. The disease was represented as an invisible and threatening presence that reorganized ways of feeling, interacting, and caring. In the procedural approach, it was observed that those who did not contract the virus mobilized representations anchored in scientific rationality and misinformation, reflecting a cognitive polyphasia marked by discourses of power, resistance, and moralization of care. Among those who experienced the infection, the body became a place of symbolic inscription, where falling ill also meant rediscovering oneself. Practices of hygiene, isolation, and vaccination were represented both as technologies of biopower and as ethical gestures of collective solidarity. The integration of the two approaches showed that self-care and care for others operate on multiple levels—cognitive, affective, and political—transcending the technical field of health and assuming the status of a social and moral practice. Thus, self-care revealed itself as a form of resistance and freedom, where the subject recognizes himself as part of a vulnerable and interdependent collective. In conclusion, the social representations of COVID-19 express the intertwining of knowledge, power, and subjectivity, configuring care as a relational and ethical practice, permeated by emotions, fears, and hopes. The research reaffirms the power of Nursing as a field for the production of knowledge about humanity and its ways of living and caring, proposing reflections and educational strategies that consider the individual in their biological, symbolic, and social totality.