Environmentality in (food) sustainability education: an analysis of a pedagogic intervention in Italy

ABSTRACT

This article applies a governmentality perspective to approach education for sustainability. First, we outline governmentality through a Foucauldian lens and consider the emergence of environmentality in Italian education. Next, we analyse education for sustainability teaching and learning dynamics. Focusing on a pedagogic intervention carried out in a hotel-management vocational high school, we explore how school programming, classroom interactions, teachers, and environmental experts conceptualise food sustainability, influencing the pupils' view. Precisely, by analysing the ‘From farm to fork' programme – the empirical case study we have investigated – three pedagogic processes are detected: ‘framing', ‘politicising', and ‘normalising'. Our argument is that they work in tandem to problematise the socio-ecological implications of eating consumption choices and to guide students towards the neoliberal solution of sustainability. Implications of this research discuss how neoliberalism influences pedagogic activities, especially as it relates to establishing environmentally responsible action and shaping the ethics of the sustainable citizen.

KEYWORDS:

• Civic education
• education for sustainability
• environmentality
• food sustainability
• governmentality
• Italy
• vocational high school

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Originating in 1980s within ecologist circles, today, the environmental organisation has strong connections with politicians, primary and secondary schools and within grassroots society. It has affiliated clubs throughout Italy and several branches – such as the education branch – which are very active in local communities. Furthermore, the high school which is the site of our fieldwork can be considered an important institution as it is highly regarded by the General Service Administration of the Lombardia district, which supervises and ranks schools’ organisation, teachers’ profiles and activities, and pupils’ achievements in terms of grades and employability in this northern region of Italy.

2 With Foucault, we use the concept of ‘regime of truth’ as it links the abstract notion of truth with the political notion of regime. For our analysis, it is important to stress that truth has political connotations in a twofold sense. On the one hand, ‘truth constitutes a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and functioning of statements’ (Foucault, 2001, p. 112).On the other hand, truth is a moral force that shapes human beings, since discourses / specialised knowledge have both a coercive and an emancipatory dimension: truth per se ‘determines its regime, makes the law, and obliges me. It is true, and I submit to it’ (Foucault, 2014, p. 112).