Paper short abstract:

This paper maps foodscapes of an upmarket grocery, operating in the heart of Marseille in France's south. How does this stylish food enterprise reflect the volatile history of Marseille's urban fabric, especially at this twentieth-first century moment of people and goods on the move?

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws on established theories of walking as "grounded" practice (de Certeau; Giard), together with recent methodologies for charting geographies of the senses (Springgay and Truman), to explore an intimate site of material culture. Epicerie l'idéal is a small, stylish grocery, positioned in one of the gentrifying streets encircling a north African/mediterranean food market, operating in the heart of Marseille in France's south. The paper invites readers to "walk" the épicerie as symptomatic of the quartier's renovation - to trace mobilities of diverse communities and culinary cultures at this twentieth-first century moment of people and goods on the move. As a conceptual guide for this "walking", we map a number of different routes. Firstly, we browse products on the shelves as narratives of remembered and imagined gastronomic pleasure, and as signifiers of cosmopolitan cultures; for the second route, we piece together the life story of the épicerie's owner - its materiality in olives, wines, oils and cheeses, and the emotional networks and sensual politics needed to sustain this life; for the final route, we situate the épicerie in the volatile history of Marseille's urban fabric, together with continuing debate of the commodification of ethnic cultures by "foodies" (Johnston and Baumann). Does the nearby fresh food market present a rebuke to the aesthetically arranged contents of Epicerie l'idéal or does the viscerality of an "embedded" history provide possibilities for a different reading: a reading beyond one of port city gentrification and the inevitability of its losses?