“Healthy” food configurations: critical analysis of power relations in context

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this article, we delve into the contexts, knowledge and power relations that lead to the emergence of what we call “healthy” food configurations. These configurations are the result of particular arrangements of realms of practices, sets of knowledge, actors, events, institutions, and more that contribute to the production of various understandings and ways of approaching “healthy” food. Mobilizing a cultural studies approach and theoretical framework, we question the power relations negotiated in how/when/for whom these configurations emerge and what knowledge at the intersection of food, bodies and health they convey and produce. We analyze the elements of local context and the broader socio-cultural ideologies that permeate food cultures and inform these configurations’ emergence. Working with and navigating through public debates, alternative food practices, political and community-based discourses and practices, and food products and trends retrieved from Quebec’s (Canada) food culture, we offer a new way of approaching different understandings of “healthy” food – as many different configurations – to unveil the diversity of the actors, knowledge, and power relations at play in their situated emergence.