Eating at school: on children, biopower and care in Turin, Italy

ABSTRACT

Food concerns practices with material and discursive effects on bodies, involving, at the same time, relations of power and care. The international debate has widely analysed food in terms of biopolitical technologies and ethics of care, paying particular attention to school meals. In particular, school canteens constitute physical and relational contested spaces, characterized by different rationalities and perspectives. Drawing from qualitative research carried out in Turin, Italy, this paper unpacks school food discourses and practices by analysing the coexistence and entanglements of biopower and care. Starting from the awareness of the fluidity of these categories, the paper suggests that food at school be neither connected nor reduced to a dichotomous and static view. It proposes a more nuanced understanding of food practices, in which forms of productive biopower and subversive care are deeply intertwined and it discusses how children, staff and parents daily negotiate these entanglements.

KEYWORDS:

• School meals
• biopower
• care
• foodscape
• Italy

Acknowledgements

This research would not have been possible without the collaboration of the City of Turin (Educational Services Division), teachers, school staff and parents interviewed, to whom I extend my heartfelt thanks. I would like to thank Egidio Dansero, Auxilia Grassi, and Daniela Converso and the whole research team: Anna Albertetti, Elisabetta Atzeni, Alessia Cambiano, Davide Consolmagno, Martina Nanotti, Eugenia Rossi, Fabio Scarnato, and Dario Stabile. Thanks to Alberto Vanolo, Panos Bourlessas, and Egidio Dansero for commenting on the article and for their help with improving my arguments. Finally, many thanks to the Journal’s Editors and the two anonymous Reviewers for their constructive criticisms.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 National data presented in this session are extracted from ISTAT (www.istat.it, last accessed January 2021).

2 ‘Pasto a scuola e benessere degli allievi’, supported by the University of Turin (Department of Culture, Politics and Society, Department of Veterinary Sciences, and Department of Psychology) together with local catering companies. The research was co-coordinated with Egidio Dansero, Auxilia Grassi and Daniela Converso.

3 https://www.epicentro.iss.it/ okkioallasalute (last access 9 April 2020).