ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on convention theory (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006) and Law’s concept of ordering (Law, 1994) to analyse the contours of a particular feeding ordering that emerged from a school meal reform in Portugal, which started a decade ago. This ‘feeding ordering’ can be deemed as having been underpinned by a bundle of conventions (market, industrial, civic, green, domestic and public), wherein the industrial, the market and the civic dominated. Special attention is paid to controversies ensued by action coordination to organize school meals according to this feeding ordering. The empirical material is drawn on two sets of data collected at different periods of time in two schools of Cascais, a town sited in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. In 2011/2012, we conducted focus groups with 10 children, interviews with teachers, kitchen staff, the local authority, and direct observation of lunch meals in a primary school. In 2015/2016, we returned to the same town and interviewed the local authority again and conducted interviews with the kitchen staff, the catering company’s quality technician and nutritionist, the parents’ association and the teaching staff of a nursery/primary school. By focusing on two controversies – school meals organization and children’s tastes – we analyse the conventions that underpin the arguments put forward by the actors in charge of school food provision. We pay attention to the ways such controversies are suspended by compromise between different conventions. The chapter contributes to understanding the disputes and compromises between different conventions mobilized by different actors for action coordination to enact a particular feeding ordering. It also shows the potential to develop further a cross fertilization between convention theory and Law’s concept of ordering.
