Claire Bullen, Universität Tübingen, Institut für Soziologie, Lehrstuhl für Migration und Diversität:

Still dancing to the same tune? An ethnographic exploration of the socio-spatial consequencesf Marseille’s year as European Capital of Culture, viewed from the margins

Abstract:
Ten years after Marseille, and the surrounding region, was officially European Capital of Culture, debates in Marseille about the impact of this event upon the urban fabric continue. Few question that preparations for this ‘mega-event’ has changed the city, including in terms of new transport and cultural infrastructure and in a new commercial offer for inhabitants and visitors. Some effects including the growing number of tourists, higher land and rental prices, and how Marseille and Marseille’s residents are governed and represented within and beyond the city’s boundaries. Two main accounts of this story dominate: either a successful repositioning and ‘civilising’ of a former renegade city; or offer a critical analysis of gentrification, commodification and displacement as part of wider neo-liberalisation of urban life. In my talk, I consider how an anthropological perspective may add to this debate. Rather than examining the city as a whole – an impossible task – or beginning in epicentre of the city’s cultural and tourist infrastructure , I decentre the gaze, to ask how politics associated with this cultural urban project may have reconfigured socio-spatial relations in ‘marginal’ parts of the city. Interviews and ethnographic observations of a dance centre set up in 2011 in one of the most deprived parts of the city serve here as entry point from where to examine contemporary politics and socio-spatial transformations – and continuity - in Marseille. I trace multiple and sometimes contradictory understandings of how Marseille’s year as capital of culture may have contributed to transformations of urban social relations in this part of city, or not.

Der Vortrag findet am Donnerstag, 01. Juni 2023  am Institut für Europäische Ethnologie, Hanuschgasse 3, 1010 Wien, Seminarraum 1 statt.