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 beenthe responsibility of parents. However publically driven healthy school food andnutrition strategies is increasingly being applied as a measure to counteract thegrowing prevalence of obesity among young people. In addition school food hasbecome a major focus for public organic procurement strategies that seeks to createmore sustainable public service provision. Since there are no national regulation ofschool food provision the school and its food supply in Denmark has become an arenafor development and experimentation in which municipalities and schools developtheir own local solutions and in which actors seeks to make their own sense andmeaning of these solutions. The purpose of this paper is to take a closer look at howthese solutions come into being and how they are shaped according to specific localcontexts and stakeholder conditions. The paper aims at applying an actor networktheoretical perspective in that it takes as a point of departure that the emerging schoolfood and nutrition systems can be regarded as a technology.Three municipalities all actively involved in the development of organic and healthyschool meal programmes were chosen as the study subjects. Based on an analysis ofinterviews with school food coordinators in the three municipalities, the paper identifiesthe involved actors and maps the interactions among them. After discussing thesimilarities and difference among the municipalities, the paper suggest that the schoolfood and nutrition strategies might be viewed as a conceptual technology that due tothe virtual absence of national regulation seems to be shaped and translated in slightlydifferent 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 mightdevelop a competition and that in turn the best version might win. The study suggestthat actor network theory might be a valuable tool for studying this shaping processand thus has the potential to give valuable insight into the further development ofhealthy and organic school meals in Denmark