Comensalidades em trânsito: os sentidos atribuídos à comida de (na) rua a partir dos escravos de ganho até os entregadores de aplicativo

Abstract

The research analyzes the presence of street food in Rio de Janeiro's Downtown since the time of the Empire through "profit slaves," then by street vendors selling products until the exponential growth of app delivery workers with the Covid-19 pandemic. These individuals in movement resist the reforms imposed by the Government and look for breaches (DE CERTEAU, 1994) by occupying and creating spaces of commensality and sociability in the functional metropolis (SIMMEL,1973) focused on the flows of capital and work. Amid the changes determined by globalization, powerful economic groups realized the need to meet the global demands and that technology could be a powerful ally, replacing a large part of human labor with robots, making people work hard for little money with no social and labor rights. This precarious work (ANTUNES, 2020) has several classifications, such as "Uberization (SLEE, 2017)" and outsourcing, being presented positively by the neoliberal speech as an excellent option for the individual who can undertake; having his own business, masking the daily difficulties. The study identifies this outlook from a global view through the film "Sorry, we missed you" by Ken Loach, followed by a local angle, with the video of the São Paulo motorcycle courier Jackson Faive, both from a fictional perspective. However, this research also contributes by bringing imbrications between the non-real and the real by analyzing the #BrequeDosApps movement and occasional journalistic stories about this topic published by Folha de São Paulo between March 2020 and August 2021. Furthermore, the investigation portrays old and new commensalities in Rio de Janeiro due to the Covid-19 pandemic that has changed social coexistence and the relationship with food. The thesis' methodology applies a multi-methodological approach inspired by Becker's mosaic (1994), in which interactions of symbols and meanings are connected and arranged, having the street food as a highlight.These individuals who occupy and circulate through urban space from colonial Brazil to contemporary times have physical similarities, are usually black and brown, young, with little schooling, and suffer from precarious work, labor exploitation, and social inequality. If in the 19th century, the whip was an instrument to torture enslaved men and women, marking their bodies when they did not comply with the demands of their “owners’’, in the 21st century, the whip is not literal, but it hurts likewise when a worker needs to sit on a motorcycle or bicycle for 14 hours, six days a week, hypnotized by technology and afraid of being blocked by the invisible boss, materialized by an application, such as I Food, Rappi, or any other.