‘Growing deliciously’ (맛있는 농사): Korean urban food cultivation as a form of cultural inheritance

Abstract

This article examines contemporary practices of urban food cultivation in Seoul as acts of ‘doing’ emotionally loaded cultural heritage making through familial practices. Widespread urban practices of food growing are examined in relation to the affective and connective charges that are illuminated in relation to family and heritage. Invocations of emotions are not mere individual/personal phenomena but can be interpreted by the social field, social interactions and family traditions of food growing. The article explores the meanings of food growing in the urban landscape and argues that contemporary urban food cultivation practices are part of a Korean sensibility towards not only food itself but also food cultivation through urban farming. The article argues that edible plant growing as a food practice is a form of ‘doing family’: a familial activity that links generations, evokes nostalgia and involves attempts to transmit values in the context of ‘compressed modernity’.