Remaking Indonesian food: The processes and implications of nutritionalization

• Main Author: Kimura, Aya Hirata
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Subjects: health sciences, nutrition; sociology, general; women's studies

This dissertation identifies and explores the phenomenon of "nutritionalization," a discursive shift in global food policy from "quantity" to "quality," or from hunger to "hidden hunger." The study traces this phenomenon through analysis of three commodities in Indonesia that correspond to three typical "nutritionalized" interventions (wheat flour for mandatory fortification, baby food for voluntary fortification, and Golden Rice for biofortification). I deploy concepts and analytical frameworks drawn from science and technology studies (STS), agrofood studies, and critical theory in order to unpack the historical trajectories of nutritional science and its characteristic practices. I show how nutritionalization in its various manifestations is coproduced by a particular social order and politics in interaction with science and expertise. This synthesis politicizes our understanding of the body, food, and nutrition, thereby showing the deficiencies of both techno-scientific determinism and social determinism. I argue that nutritionalization has been propelled by a confluence of the logics of the market, the state, and science in what I call a "representational economy." Representational economy exposes the epistemological apparatus and contradictory socioeconomic and cultural effects of nutritionalized policies. This project challenges the depoliticized and atomistic assumptions of nutritional science, and helps to better illuminate the shifting of power and subjectivity in modern Third World agrofood systems.