Abid Bossouf

Thesis project

Oral health is now a major public health issue at both the individual and societal levels. It is characterized by a multidimensional aspect, as it involves biological, psychological, and social factors.
Because oral health remains strongly correlated with socioeconomic status both within countries and globally, consideration of oral health cannot be separated from a systemic analysis at different levels of organization, from local to global.

Oral health is therefore highly complex. Sociologist Edgar Morin theorized complex thinking at the end of the 20th century. Opposing Cartesian thinking, this theory highlights the necessary interactions between different fields, such as mind & matter, philosophy & science, body & soul, and therefore proposes an interdisciplinary approach in order to best study all dimensions of the subjects under investigation, in this case oral health.

Complex thinking emphasizes the importance of linking the humanities to the biological sciences (Morin, 1980). The object of research cannot be considered outside its environment, ignoring the history, culture, and society in which the individual evolves. Oral health and its study must therefore be ecodisciplinarized, i.e., studied taking into account the contextual, cultural, and social dimensions in which they arise, pose problems, become entrenched, and transform.

However, medicine is still too compartmentalized, and each specialty tends to become increasingly specialized. Scientific knowledge is constantly evolving; every week, more than 20,000 new scientific articles in the field of health are published.

Nevertheless, while scientific research allows us to isolate objects in order to understand them, human phenomena are complex, and so "the subject speaks." Pierre Bourdieu conceptualized the notion of habitus, which he defines as "an immanent law, deposited in each agent by early education." It therefore refers to an individual's way of being, their ethos, and their way of behaving, their hexis.

Thus, a multidisciplinary and intersectoral approach appears essential in order to control all the factors involved specific to the individual, his environment, and the society in which he lives.

How does complex thinking in oral health enable the development of a public health strategy to prevent, treat, and stabilize oral diseases?

Edited byNicolas Giraudeau