Emergências sanitárias: fome, violências e resistências entre moradoras de uma favela do Rio de Janeiro no contexto pandêmico

Abstract

The research underpinning this thesis stems from a long-term dialogue with female beneficiaries of an irregular social assistance system, residents of Favela do Tripé, a fictional name assigned to a particularly impoverished area within a larger set of favelas located in Rio de Janeiro. The fieldwork - which also includes interviews with professionals from the Social Assistance Reference Center (CRAS) operating in the region – was conducted between 2019 and 2023, years marked by the pandemic of the new coronavirus, political changes that generated instability in the social assistance regime, and by a flood that struck the region, all of which, events that have greatly affected the lives of those people.The fieldwork led to the realization that the term “health emergency”, in the singular form, is overly limited, as there are a variety of factors intersecting the lives of these subjects, such as hunger, multiple forms of violence, instabilities in social programs, and a consistently depleted infrastructure. It is argued, then, that at Tripé, extraordinary, critical events are part of the ordinary, the everyday life, and local sociability, making it necessary to talk about “health emergencies”. It is through this perspective and in this context that I seek to analyze how the instability in managing precariousness, characterized by uncertainties in receiving government aid (among other uncertainties), produces new logics of life, new social relations, and the mobilization of moralities, affections, and conflicts. This thesis argues that hunger is one of the factors that organizes social life in this specific territory, generating resistances, conflicts, tensions, and alliances that culminate even in new community leaderships.