‘Merguez Capitale’: The merguez sausage as a discursive construction of cosmopolitan branding, colonial memory and local flavour in Marseille

Abstract

Official cultural sectors increasingly deploy cosmopolitan branding efforts, based on the diversity of migrant populations, to market a city as attractive and open. These strategies, meanwhile, continue to coexist with attachments to place as well as a sense of local identification and belonging. In this paper I refer to the way food, and in particular the merguez sausage, is used as a marker to evoke both the cosmopolitan and the local specificities of the city of Marseille, once celebrated as the gateway to France's empire. This work examines cultural initiatives, city streets, film and published Pied-Noir testimonials to argue that the merguez, a spicy sausage associated with North African cuisine, is used as a discursive construction of cosmopolitan branding, attached to a colonial memory, notably Algerian, while coexisting with the formation of local specificities in Marseille.

Marseille, European Capital of Culture 2013 Ins and Offs: A case for rethinking the effects of large-scale cultural initiatives

“…This paper argues that Marseille’s 2013 ECOC year acts as a catalyst for the creation and expression of practices that fall outside the parameters of the In (official ECOC programme) with some events seen as Off (the excluded) and others neither In nor Off but blatantly ‘at war’ with the notion of culture. As I have shown in a previous article on the ECOC programme (Giovanangeli, 2015), it also argues that, in contrast to the official programme, which presents events and performances celebrating the European and Mediterranean dimension of the EU, local responses embrace the local characteristics of the city, such as urban difficulties and social realities, and make them the essential focus of their work.…”

“…(Off Conférence de presse, 2012) These statements contest the objectives of the ECOC, which the Off organisers see as 'un événement trop souvent perçu comme gigantesque, complexe, inaccessible, incompréhensible, illisible' (Off Conférence de presse, 2012). Significantly, the Off de Marseille 2013 (described in Giovanangeli, 2015) is the first off organised in response to an ECOC programme, suggesting that the term 'off' was selected specifically to rival the aims of the official programme. Eric Pringels, one of the cofounders of the Off, further highlights this opposition when he describes the Off de Marseille 2013 as 'un festival qui veut exister "tout contre" l'évènement officiel Marseille-Provence 2013' (Off Conférence de presse, 2012).…”

Branding, Diplomacy, and Inclusion: The Role of Migrant Cuisines in Cities’ Local and International Action

“…In the first case, it emerges as the result of local stakeholders' action, without the municipality's involvement, at least initially. This is often the case for diverse gastronomy branding, as demonstrated by Marseille's brand as 'merguez capital,' launched as part of a cultural initiative led by local graphic designers and journalists [75], or its KousKous Festival, organized since 2018 by local food and retail actors [76].…”