The shaping of organic & healthy school meal provision concepts: an actor network theoretical perspective

School food in Denmark has unlike many other European countries traditionally been
the responsibility of parents. However publically driven healthy school food and
nutrition strategies is increasingly being applied as a measure to counteract the
growing prevalence of obesity among young people. In addition school food has
become a major focus for public organic procurement strategies that seeks to create
more sustainable public service provision. Since there are no national regulation of
school food provision the school and its food supply in Denmark has become an arena
for development and experimentation in which municipalities and schools develop
their own local solutions and in which actors seeks to make their own sense and
meaning of these solutions. The purpose of this paper is to take a closer look at how
these solutions come into being and how they are shaped according to specific local
contexts and stakeholder conditions. The paper aims at applying an actor network
theoretical perspective in that it takes as a point of departure that the emerging school
food and nutrition systems can be regarded as a technology.
Three municipalities all actively involved in the development of organic and healthy
school meal programmes were chosen as the study subjects. Based on an analysis of
interviews with school food coordinators in the three municipalities, the paper identifies
the involved actors and maps the interactions among them. After discussing the
similarities and difference among the municipalities, the paper suggest that the school
food and nutrition strategies might be viewed as a conceptual technology that due to
the virtual absence of national regulation seems to be shaped and translated in slightly
different directions by the local and municipal actor networks. An important users and other stakeholders seem to interact with and impact these technologies and result in different versions. It might be speculated that these different versions might
develop a competition and that in turn the best version might win. The study suggest
that actor network theory might be a valuable tool for studying this shaping process
and thus has the potential to give valuable insight into the further development of
healthy and organic school meals in Denmark.