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Moral Geographies of Young People and Food: Beyond Jamie’s School Dinners

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Play, Recreation, Health and Well Being

Part of the book series: Geographies of Children and Young People ((GCYP,volume 9))

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Abstract

Over the last decade, school food has emerged as one of the number of ways in which concerns over children and young people’s health might be addressed. In 2005 Jamie Oliver, TV chef, emerged as a significant voice, championing the capacity of school food to avert a range of potentially detrimental health conditions. This chapter attempts to identify and analyze the ways in which the complex and ambiguous figure of Jamie Oliver has and continues to claim some authority – in a variety of TV shows and social/moral enterprises such as Working in Jamie’s Kitchen and Jamie’s School Dinners – to intervene into what might be termed “the moral geographies of young people and food.” This chapter is concerned with those programs and interventions that aim to educate and encourage people (families, parents, young people, school teachers, dinner ladies) to make “better” food choices in what has been called the battleground of school dining rooms. The intervention of social/moral entrepreneurs into these issues/spaces raises troubling questions not only about knowledge, expertise, and authority in relation to young people, food, and health but perhaps more significantly on who is/can/should be an actor in programs that overwhelmingly target the children of disadvantaged/poor families. Drawing on the work of Foucault and the late Stuart Hall, the chapter explores how the figure of the moral entrepreneur might compel us to imagine the State as only one of a possible range of actors in the moral geographies of young people and food.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education and Childhood, Leeds Beckett University, LS6, 3QS, Leeds, UK

    Jo Pike

  2. Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, 124 Little La Trobe St, 3000, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Peter Kelly

Authors
  1. Jo Pike
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  2. Peter Kelly
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Correspondence to Jo Pike .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography and Planning, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom

    Bethan Evans

  2. Centre of Children and Youth, The University of Northampton, Northampton, United Kingdom

    John Horton

  3. Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Tracey Skelton

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Pike, J., Kelly, P. (2015). Moral Geographies of Young People and Food: Beyond Jamie’s School Dinners. In: Evans, B., Horton, J., Skelton, T. (eds) Play, Recreation, Health and Well Being. Geographies of Children and Young People, vol 9. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4585-96-5_24-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4585-96-5_24-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-4585-96-5

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