Culinary movements and higher education collaborating for sustainable development

Comparing three culinary movements with a distinct focus on sustainability the article explores how collective organizational actors interact with higher education institutions when promoting sustainable change in the culinary field. The article shows how the culinary movements collaborate with, emulate, and adopt practices from higher education institutions and scientific disciplines in their efforts to drive sustainable culinary change. We specify four types of interactions through which the culinary movements engage with higher education institutions: formal collaboration, imitative practices, enlisting academics, and emulating academic events. Our findings contribute to previous discussions in two ways. First, we show how collective organizational actors and higher education institutions collaborate and exchange knowledge and practices in a way that serves both parties’ quest for sustainable change and legitimacy. Moreover, we show how the presence of field-level goals (i.e., sustainability) encourages multidirectional interaction and translation of practices, as common field-level goals heightens focus on similarity rather than difference.