Public health and its areas: territories or villagization?

The progressive configuration of specific areas of knowledge and practice within the field of public health in Brazil poses a challenge for the maintenance of the field's identity and unity. How can we understand the centrifugal movement of the differentiation of these areas away from their common origin? How can we restore the identity of the field and create synergies between areas? This essay reflects on these issues drawing on the theoretical and philosophical contributions of contemporary hermeneutics (Gadamer, Ricoeur, Habermas). We provide a critique of the notion of epistemological territoriality and, utilizing a normative and propositional identity derived from the facticity of the social in health, we propose the notion of "villagization" to (re)construct field unity in its plurality, indicating some movements that have the potential to stimulate this process.