Abstract

This thesis is an ethnographic study of endemic hunger in the city of Trairi, in the Northeastern state of Ceara. Brazil. It explores the lunch time meal ( almoço ) as a socio-cultural construct and proposes it as a useful tool for the investigation and comprehension of the daily experiences that take place when one is hungry. The extensive descriptions and the narratives of women and men of Trairi complement one another as we come to discover two slightly different discourses of hunger that emphasize the occurrence of a paradox that plays either on the presence or on the absence of a socio-cultural problem of hunger. Several conclusions emerge from the arguments at the basis of this thesis: endemic hunger is understood as meaning malnutrition and undernutrition; the Trairiense know poverty which governs their socio-cultural eating patterns; the almoço is the principal meal of the day and is an excellent milieu from which to scrutinize the ideologies rooted within everyday eating practices; and lastly, people have developed different ways of acting and of speaking about food in such a manner that they are able to endure their condition. These findings come together and work simultaneously to silence the state of endemic hunger in Trairi: it is not a silence that relies on intimidation or on enforcement; it is a silence that is culturally shared and ingrained in social codes that, I suggest, are being reproduced in the daily performance of the almoço