Eating bodies, growing selves in a Brazilian favela

The economic growth of Brazil in the early and mid-2000s has created opportunities for people like my interlocutors, the young and media-savvy residents of Brazilian favelas to consume and partake in a global market of the production of the self. These have nourished their pursuit for diversity and difference and shaped the eclectic qualities of their consumption practices. In its plural forms, consumption, or eating, which will take centre stage in this article, has enabled an expanded palette and palate of being, acting and relishing life in the favela. I argue that eating can be understood as a method of becoming; it can be used as an active attempt at asserting agency over one’s body and, by extension, at asserting subjectivity in a lifeworld open to multiple dimensions of uncertainty and insecurity.