Escaping the local trap: Insights on re-localization from school food reform

Abstract

Building on the stimulating critique of normative views of scale provided by the literature on the 'local trap', some agri-food researchers have recently argued that local food initiatives (including, for example, American Farm-to-School programs) reproduce neo-liberal values and forms of governance. By focusing on school food reform in two devolved sites of the UK, this paper aims to show that, even when embedded in the power dynamics and values of neo-liberalism, the local can produce sustainable development outcomes. This raises the need for an inductive research approach that assesses the merits (or lack of) of localism in the concrete-while also taking into account the role of the State as a new powerful actor on the agri-food scene. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.