Despite the crisis, beyond hunger: solidarity and resistance in a peripheral community during COVID-19
solidariedade e resistência em uma comunidade periférica durante a COVID-19
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.34019/2318-101X.2024.v19.43520Abstract
This article emerges from an ethnography that has been developed since 2021 in a peripheral community in the city of Salvador, Bahia. Starting from a case considered "emblematic" by the residents, where twin children under the care of a single father were in a condition of extreme hunger, I seek to understand the dynamics of conformation of a solidarity network for the confrontation of hunger in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the Actor-Network Theory, I analyze the case through the agencies of Jorge, a community leader and president of the Residents' Association. It was possible to observe the reconfiguration of the family's support network, removing them from extreme precariousness. Invisibility and vulnerability mobilized the emergence of a "doing something (fazer algo)" materialized in acts of mutual, diverse and conflicting resistance and solidarity: the distribution of food baskets based on a media broadcast; the obtaining of food ("kilo by kilo") and, finally, the collection of "ten (reais) from one, ten from another" to pay the family's rent, ensuring their existence with dignity. Thus, I try to demonstrate that, in the face of contingent and structural precariousness, the agency of solidarity, even if temporary, feeds possibilities and frictions at the limits of the daily life of low-income people.
Keywords: Hunger. Social Vulnerability. Precarization. Coping Strategies. COVID-19.
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