Kimchi – Taste of Home? Food and Identity as Exemplified by Everyday Nutrition Practices of Korean Migrants

The current cultural anthropological food studies have developed in contrast to a nutritive functionalism and a naturalistic view of food, focusing primarily on processes of collective symbolisms of food. This paper suggests a different perspective for the research on food and migration, beyond the discussion of the causality between food and identity. It pays attention to everyday food practices, experiences and individual strategies related to taste. Preparing, serving, and eating kimchi is neither a mere passing-on of tradition nor an absolute loyalty to ethnic essences and rituals conceived of as unchanging. Instead, as the study shows, it is a creative act of selecting, transforming, and adding on, in which people look for whatever means are available and suitable to create the feeling of home wherever they are.The current cultural anthropological food studies have developed in contrast to a nutritive functionalism and a naturalistic view of food, focusing primarily on processes of collective symbolisms of food. This paper suggests a different perspective for the research on food and migration, beyond the discussion of the causality between food and identity. It pays attention to everyday food practices, experiences and individual strategies related to taste. Preparing, serving, and eating kimchi is neither a mere passing-on of tradition nor an absolute loyalty to ethnic essences and rituals conceived of as unchanging. Instead, as the study shows, it is a creative act of selecting, transforming, and adding on, in which people look for whatever means are available and suitable to create the feeling of home wherever they are