ABSTRACT
By most standards, the New Nordic Food phenomenon is not a controversy. At least not in the sense that its stakeholders are mobilized by their desire to dispute new knowledge claims, question political decisions, or voice their concerns about some emerging or untested technology. Unlike climate change, fracking, GMOs, or immunization schemes, the involvement of actors in the New Nordic Food movement is not primarily defined by their distrust or their alarm, their skepticism or their disagreement, but by rather more laudatory impulses like culinary experimentation or social innovation. And yet it would be a mistake to think that these actors are not engaged in some form of political undertaking. The New Nordic Food movement has an explicit agenda of changing not only the state of affairs in, but also the premises on which we perceive and engage with, a range of contemporary issues, many of which are traditionally controversial, such as sustainability, rural development or public health. It is a form of politics that does not take place in the established political arenas, but in the everyday laboratories of growers, consumers, chefs, tourism professionals, food scientists, and nutritionists. In the vocabulary deployed by the editors of this book, it is an ontological form of politics.
