"Mi necesidad es mi comida, somos adultos mayores que ya no producimos, pero estamos consumiendo": Eating citizenship during the first wave of the Peruvian Covid quarantine

Abstract:Based on qualitative interviews conducted by a multi-disciplinary team of health researchers with 40 adults over the age of 60 during the first wave of the Covid pandemic in Lima, Peru this article considers what eating might suggest about contemporary Peruvian citizenship as conceptualized by older adults. I argue that the way that older adults have been culturally imagined as vulnerable by the government competes with other identities that these adults would like to claim. How they choose to enact citizenship revolves around food access and availability for themselves and their families. As a result they emerge as a group that can eschew blanket protections through imposed restrictions and so become a public that must be heard, represented and served.