“My Mediterranean Is Not the One You See on the Picture Postcards”

This article narrates a walking tour through one of Marseille’s oldest food markets and its surrounds in an attempt to trace, in its sensory landscapes, intersecting meanings of food, place and identity. Drawing on Iain Chamber’s challenge to visualize an “uprooted geography” of Europe (2008:17), we propose to focus on the port city of Marseille on France’s southern coast as a “different” model of Euro-Mediterranean narratives. Marseille is a city, after all, on the cusp between Europe, Asia and North Africa, its gaze primarily directed southwards to encompass the Mediterranean and the regions and nations at its edges. Through recent gentrification of the built environment and initiatives emphasizing the arts and hospitality, Marseille had positioned itself by 2013 as the host city of the European Capitals of Culture program (ECOC), its Mediterranean identity the dominant thematic. Our study is crucially informed by Marseille’s Marché des Capucins close to the city’s historic port. The market’s proximity to the port means that it is directly affected by migrant flows and urban transformations. Analyzing the role of food in shaping Mediterranean identities and the legacy of the changes taking place in the market then becomes our critical task

Colonialism · Gentrification · Mediterranean climate · Tourism · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Cultural Identity and Heritage · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs