ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how issues of self, personhood, emotions and subjectivity can be integrated with a critical analysis of oppression, poverty and social exclusion through revolta, an emotion story. Emotions, Michelle Rosaldo suggests, are no less cultural than beliefs; they are cognitions or interpretations involving body, self and identity. Revolta which can be translated as revolt, revulsion or rage is a common expression amongst youngsters in Rio de Janeiro living on the street and in the favelas and peripheries. Indeed, revolta appeared as a culturally-available idiom or story found within the broader life-stories told about the youngsters' own trajectories. Interpretivist trends in the social sciences have led many to argue that meaning' is a public fact and that personal life also takes shape in cultural terms. On the street revolta appears to grow gradually and becomes more acute with increasing age, though most youngsters can be said to have arrived on the street with at least a little of it.
