Working with Policy: Restructuring Healthy Eating Practices and the Circuit of Policy Communication

Abstract

This case study examines how multiple stakeholders participated in the construction and enactment of policy texts that restructure healthy eating practices. Policies serve important communicative roles in the organizing of everyday experiences. By framing policy as a discursive practice, this analysis illustrates the complex ways that communication figures prominently in participatory policymaking processes. The case study focuses explicitly on food policy, as well as the ways in which stakeholders engaged in practices such as managing paradox and wordplay to restructure school meal programs. To best capture the discursive practices surrounding policy, this essay also introduces the Circuit of Policy Communication as a framework for analyzing and enacting policy work.