Gentrifying Spice: Refuge and Rebellion In Marseillais Spice Shops

Abstract

Marseille’s culture is defined only by its indefinability. It’s a multicultural mélange bringing together influences from each wave of people that have passed through its ancient port. With new people come new conflict. Marseille has forever been a land of refuge, but it has also forever been an object of control, a fact that the city has most commonly responded to with rebellion. Most recently, such control comes in the form of gentrification. Noailles, a neighborhood just blocks from Le Vieux Port epitomizes Marseille’s cultural amalgamation. Five spices shops within Noailles, can be thought of as even smaller microcosms of the city. I found myself in Le Paradis D’Épice, one of the shops that has held onto historic spiritual and health practices thanks to a charismatic owner: Alibaba. This thesis explores the ways these shops, and in particular Alibaba’s shop, navigate the changing landscape through assimilation and rebellion.