Paper short abstract:

Drawing on a multi-sited ethnographic study in three Italian primary schools, I report evidence of the hiatus that characterizes the encounter between the top-down medical model on nutrition implemented by authorities and the actual actors involved in children's nourishment.

Paper long abstract:

I illustrate the governmental steps and dispositif through which the organization of children's meal takes place in three Italian primary school canteens. The top-down medical model on nutrition initially stems from WHO's manuals and scientific evidence, for then being progressively deciphered and transformed by several institutions hierarchically placed in what I call the "food and health productive chain". I show how this top-down model of intervention has an internal coherency and effectiveness based on scientific evidence, which remains largely uncontested as long as it is not materialized as a warm meal in the plate of the children. It works as a perfectly integrated and functioning panopticon provided that no one is in custody. I then move to examine the actual reactions of parents, teachers, cooks and children to the top-down model. I show conscious and unconscious resistances from various sides: children's refusal of meals, parents' snack sneaking, cooks management of meal portions, teachers' impediments to intervene and other forms of "strategic reversibility".

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