Mediations among concepts, knowledge and policies on food, nutrition and food and nutrition security

This paper is a review of the international literature on conceptual approaches to food and nutrition policies and security, such as food and nutrition policy and food regimes. The objective was to recognize relationships among concepts, institutional arrangements of the State and political action for each approach in the international context. The perspective adopted was that a conceptual proposal does not arise only from the standpoint of knowledge, but also from the political action of the actors involved, and it is reinvented and redefined in each geopolitical and historical context. Therefore, it carries a political intent, resulting from ever disputed projects, directing and changing depending on what is considered the object of each policy, the attempts to answer the problems and the necessary institutional arrangements. It highlights the view that knowledge construction overflows academic contribution, involving different actors and interest groups and at the same time, it evinces the production of knowledge as political activism. In addition, it points to a reflection on the historical process of construction of conceptual approaches and their inflections in order to conceive a policy. Thus, the ways to explain the phenomena related to food and nutrition or food and nutrition security have changed over time and reveal distinct institutional arrangements, more or less intersectoral, based on different views of how to treat the problem.