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The Myth of the French 'Country' Market


jamiemaw

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Absolutely.

Being able to tell the difference between artisanal and "industrial" produce is the least a food lover should be able to do, wherever in the world they roam. France or not.

Small "producer" market stalls exactly the way I described them, with goods purchased from wholesalers? Sorry, I don't buy that. With just a little practice it is quite easy to know what you're buying. It also takes a bit of knowledge of the region and its agricultural peculiarities, which I agree visitors can't always have. But believe me, if you know how to buy good produce, you'll know how to do that wherever you are. As for the modest stall vendors I'm referring to going to quite elaborate lengths to achieve the appearance of artisanal produce, I don't buy that either, for buying from wholesalers would be more troublesome for them than just growing the stuff. In no way the little granny and her son with their three trussed chickens, one basket of mushrooms and six jars of honey are likely to have bought them from a wholesaler, for that would be a lot of trouble for not much of a gain.

I'm tempted to believe that the illusion is more in the eye of the beholder, i.e. mistaking an average "maraîcher" who sells fine-looking produce, some of it of their own production, some of it bought - which is quite common in France - for someone pretending to be a 100% artisanal producer. My favorite maraîcher at the Monge market in Paris does grow some of his vegetables and herbs, and buys the rest. He doesn't claim to grow everything but he will tell you what he grows and what he doesn't. Everyone does the same. However, I believe that some tourists or visitors, seeing his stall, could easily believe at first sight that everything he sells is home production and would be disappointed if they asked him the truth.

I go to markets a lot, in Paris and in other parts of France, and apart from the typical cases I've described before, I see very little likeliness of fraud in terms of "country" produce. Unless the "fraud" concerns produce that doesn't even look "country"-like in the first place. There are laws and rules, too. Producers have to be labeled as such at markets. I know some stall vendors who sell 100% home-grown produce. I know some who sell only partly home-grown produce. And others who sell only bought produce. The quality may be excellent in every one of these cases, but the aspect of the produce, the choice offered, and even the way of selling them will be different - and unmistakable.

At any rate, if I ever get to go to France, I'll need all of the help and advice you can give. :smile:

Of course, just PM me before you come to France, and I'll take you to a market when I have a chance. I'll show you how to spot a true maraîcher, a true small producer, and a true tourist trap (if we find one).

Thanks for your response and clarifications Ptipois. You remind me of a man that sold fresh fish/shellfish from a truck in front of the office building where I used to work. I happened to see him one day as he was stepping out of his truck with several well wrapped packages and I said hello and looked up at his truck. Unfortunately I can't remember his name/name on the side of truck but it definitely had something to do with fish and seafood. We made some small talk and he let me know that several people in our building purchased seafood from him which he delivered. Of course, never known for keeping a secret, I ran upstairs and told all of my girlfriends about this guy. Consequently we began purchasing seafood from him off the back of his truck. He's such a nice person and as time went on we got to know him better and he began to bring produce with him from a small farm he and wife had as well: string beans, tomatoes, peaches, strawberries, squash, and more.

Why your response reminded me of him was that, being a city girl raised by two people who were raised on farms, I learned to be able to taste the difference between mass produced, grocery store produce and the "real" thing. I'm telling you that this guy had the real thing. The best example of this were his strawberries which unlike the supermarket strawberries that one can find here all year round, these had such a deep berry flavor, were red through and through (our supermarket strawberries tend to be red on the outside, white and cottony on the inside) and so sweet and juicy that you almost needed a bib to eat them. His fish and seafood and all of the other produce he sold was delicious as well. All of the artiface in the world comes to a screeching halt for me as soon as I actually taste the food. Believe me the difference in taste between what he sold and what's being sold at our local Safeway is unmistakeable.

Now, if only I could get someone here to sponsor my "research" trip to France. :smile:

Inside me there is a thin woman screaming to get out, but I can usually keep the Bitch quiet: with CHOCOLATE!!!

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I've been to many a Farmer's Market here in the states where the products came straight from the wholesalers.

Farmer's Markets rules and regulations all vary as to what they will allow. . .

Yes, and it is always amazing to me that people don't find it strange that just that one giant stand happens to have giant ripe tomatoes and peaches, in central Illinois, in early June when all the other guys are basically limited to onions and turnip greens. :rolleyes:

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There was apparently some comflict between the two groups of vendors, and quite a bit of pressure from the Mayor for the organic vendors to join the regular market. The organic vendors resisted this on the basis that they wished to better define their products. Many of the later group are quite young and idealistic.

This only means that the organic vendors were doing what organic vendors usually do, i.e. define their products as organic. Which doesn't mean that the non-organic stalls were selling lower-quality products. Just that they were not organic. This is defined by a chart of production, and a very strict one — and some vegetable and fruit growers in the other part of the market may very well sell much better produce, and healthier from an organic point of view, but they don't have the label, either because they did not try to get it, or because the criteria were too hard to meet.

Yes this is true.

Jamie - unfortunately, with out reading the book it self it is not possible to make precise comments on the content etc. I find the premise very interesting in the context of presenting this original issue, but I insitinctively shy away from absolutes (sorry if I have mis-interperated this issue).

I am sure that what is been highlighted is a very valid point, but surely it indicates one end of a typical normal distribution? Buyer beware and all that.

I'm not sure that this is confined to French markets though and ultimately if the customer is happy with the outcome does it matter?

In the product is good, is the UK supermarket adding soil to clean potatoes and the creation and marketing of the "Blue Foot chicken—an American facsimile of France’s poulet de Bresse" a deception?

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Of course it's not just the French open-air market that was born from this artifice. It's a time-honoured manipulation seen all around the world, from the rafia-tied litres of second-rate olive oil in Chiantishire, to the cruise ship tourist drops of Ketchikan and Juneau.

Juneau a tourist trap?

I usually don't think of state capitals, not even state capitals nestled in fjords with mountains all around and no highway connections to anyplace more than about five miles distant, as places of this type.

Usually, they're sleepy, sometimes overgrown little burgs, with little to recommend them aside from the presence of the state government, if that can be said to be recommendation.

Then again, Juneau probably has access to really good salmon as compensation, which might justify the tourist-trappery.

Which reminds me of a tale I heard many, many, many years ago about a band of Catholic friars who maintained some sort of roadside stand somewhere in the United States where they sold their own foodstuffs made at the monastery, dressed in their traditional robes.

According to the story, when a visitor inquired about their religious order, one of the brothers replied, "We're Tourist Trappists."

Maybe they were affiliated with this Kentucky abbey?

If their cheese weren't quite remarkable, I would suspect yes.

Sandy Smith, Exile on Oxford Circle, Philadelphia

"95% of success in life is showing up." --Woody Allen

My foodblogs: 1 | 2 | 3

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Yes this is true.

Jamie - unfortunately, with out reading the book it self it is not possible to make precise comments on the content etc. I find the premise very interesting in the context of presenting this original issue, but I insitinctively shy away from absolutes (sorry if I have mis-interperated this issue).

I am sure that what is been highlighted is a very valid point, but surely it indicates one end of a typical normal distribution? Buyer beware and all that.

I'm not sure that this is confined to French markets though and ultimately if the customer is happy with the outcome does it matter?

In the product is good, is the UK supermarket adding soil to clean potatoes and the creation and marketing of the "Blue Foot chicken—an American facsimile of France’s poulet de Bresse" a deception?

He is well paid who is well satisfied.

I should think that deceptive trading practices are as old as humanity. I believe the first example was C. Magnon & Sons short-weighing a filet of mastadon, or the early herbalist-philosophers, Dawn of Thyme, selling old sages as fresh.

In Evelyn Welch's brilliant new book Shopping in the Renaissance, Consumer Cultures in Italy 1400 - 1600 (Yale University Press), she states:

"As a consequence, these Bolognese treccole, defined as 'all those who retail fruit, greens, vegetables, and their seeds and other things that they have bought in order to sell again which are normally sold by market gardeners who toil for and cultivate things themselves', were normally not allowed into the market to sell their wares until after the market had officially closed at midday. When they appeared, they were not to be visibly separated from the peasant gardeners, the ortolane, who were themselves carefully defined as those with market gardens either inside the city walls or within three miles of the town."

She goes on to say that in Venice, "There were severe punishments for those who [sic] to disguise themselves as peasants in order to pretend that they had grown their wares themselves."

It seems the Italians were on their game, even in 1410. We can only hope that the City of Turino has copied this ancient by-law during the current festivities.

And finally, in the case of your soiled spuds, are the parties to the social contract not complicit? One of the frequent observations within Market Day in Provence is that even experienced local consumers suspend all logic in order to buy produce that couldn't possibly have come from the vendor's own 'farm'.

As you read, she then cites the case of the vendor with just a few items, versus those that reveal their displays as elaborate cornucopiae. There are many retailers (boutique versus department), who follow this psychology, but it was interesting to see it reduced to this level, and the seeming fact that many shoppers found the 'boutique' (a few chickens, leeks and a bit of other, blemished produce) more convincing.

I think one of her points is that both parties are complicit in this little confidence game. Just as when we purchase a tennis shirt with a little polo player on the breast, so too we might buy a little bit of Ralph's other designs on our lives. But in the case of the open-air markets of France, the author allows that the badge of honour, or brand, is the artful display complete with dead lapin, the rusticated fermier, or the glass of pastis just down the cobbles.

Edited by jamiemaw (log)

from the thinly veneered desk of:

Jamie Maw

Food Editor

Vancouver magazine

www.vancouvermagazine.com

Foodblog: In the Belly of the Feast - Eating BC

"Profumo profondo della mia carne"

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Of course it's not just the French open-air market that was born from this artifice. It's a time-honoured manipulation seen all around the world, from the rafia-tied litres of second-rate olive oil in Chiantishire, to the cruise ship tourist drops of Ketchikan and Juneau.

Juneau a tourist trap?

I usually don't think of state capitals, not even state capitals nestled in fjords with mountains all around and no highway connections to anyplace more than about five miles distant, as places of this type.

Usually, they're sleepy, sometimes overgrown little burgs, with little to recommend them aside from the presence of the state government, if that can be said to be recommendation.

Then again, Juneau probably has access to really good salmon as compensation, which might justify the tourist-trappery.

Which reminds me of a tale I heard many, many, many years ago about a band of Catholic friars who maintained some sort of roadside stand somewhere in the United States where they sold their own foodstuffs made at the monastery, dressed in their traditional robes.

According to the story, when a visitor inquired about their religious order, one of the brothers replied, "We're Tourist Trappists."

Maybe they were affiliated with this Kentucky abbey?

If their cheese weren't quite remarkable, I would suspect yes.

For the record, Sandy, I didn't call Juneau a tourist trap. I called it a cruise ship tourist drop. Believe me, when a couple of Panamax-class cruisers pull in, the beautiful scenery quickly gets hidden behind a forest of bad tracksuits. :blink:

from the thinly veneered desk of:

Jamie Maw

Food Editor

Vancouver magazine

www.vancouvermagazine.com

Foodblog: In the Belly of the Feast - Eating BC

"Profumo profondo della mia carne"

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And finally, in the case of your soiled spuds, are the parties to the social contract not complicit? One of the frequent observations within Market Day in Provence is that even experienced local consumers suspend all logic in order to buy produce that couldn't possibly have come from the vendor's own 'farm'.

As you read, she then cites the case of the vendor with just a few items, versus those that reveal their displays as elaborate cornucopiae. There are many retailers (boutique versus department), who follow this psychology, but it was interesting to see it reduced to this level, and the seeming fact that many shoppers found the 'boutique' (a few chickens, leeks and a bit of other, blemished produce) more convincing.

I think one of her points is that both parties are complicit in this little confidence game. .....

I think thay this is correct. The potato thing happened just after moved the UK (approximately 6 years). Nobody I spoke to this about this curiosity had noticed it, but if they had throught about it there would have been not other logical conclusion, other then fakery.

I'm not sure that people do think logically in such situations and in fact in regards to the French market thing, quite the opposite. People with disposable

incomes may simply want more out of the experience then an honest bargin. Why not buy into the fantasy if you can afford it?

Did the author attempt to connect frequency of fakery etc with socio-economic scale? Having witnessed some absolutely furious haggling in Greece for a handful of soup-fish and similar drama in Lithuania, I can't imagine that the social bargin between these vendors and customers extends to maintenance of the a middleclass charade?

Edited by Adam Balic (log)
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Jamie - unfortunately, with out reading the book it self it is not possible to make precise comments on the content etc. I find the premise very interesting in the context of presenting this original issue, but I insitinctively shy away from absolutes (sorry if I have mis-interperated this issue).

I have tried to get some information on the book. First of all it is not very easy to find in French (as a food writer I have never heard of it, though it was issued in 1996) and from what I gather it is originally a university thesis based on the careful observation of the Carpentras market. Which is not really enough to draw conclusions on "the markets of France".

If I were an anthropologist/geographer/student in ATP (popular arts and traditions), and were I to study the market of Carpentras, I would by no means expect to come up with a fair and objective study of French markets in general, but rather, through the Carpentras market, with a complex report on the phenomenon of local commerce aimed at tourists and rich Parisians and Britishers who have their country houses in the near region. Local produce and authenticity being things I wouldn't particularly be seeking at the Carpentras market, especially in Summer. Of course the locals still have to buy their food, but the tourist aspect does weigh a lot in that particular market.

At any rate, this is a well-defined subject, which is not really French markets, unless (again, I haven't read the book) the author has covered the whole French territory up to the small villages and city suburbs (where you often find the most amazing produce). Now if this is the case, it was probably not a good idea to start with Carpentras anyway.

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I haven't read the book so I can't say much about this particular study or the quality of the journalism covering it except that what Ptipois very astutely mentions - Anyone with a habit of market shopping and seasonal cooking can idenitfy the producers vs. the vendors at the market. It's just a plain simple fact. There is nothing wrong with vendors getting their produce from various sources, it's what differentiates them from the producers.

I mention this on several levels in my eG foodblogs, where for the most part I make a conscious choice to choose from the source when I can. The rule at the St. Antoine market in Lyon is that producers have the right to label their product with the word 'producteur', and vendors of wholesale products do not. Fraud is easily spotted and heavily fined, everyone knows their neighbor, and competition is not going to allow for anyone turning a blind eye to it.

I can easily say however, that there are many charming methods the vendors use to display their goods, and it is a source of entertainment. I found it amusing to see that over the years a certain toothless grinned country bumpkin-esque fellow with a nice holler has worked for several different vendors. Does this fool people who know particular markets well? No. This is called sales technique.

The art of sourcing your chosen market products for your own kitchen, taking the time to know your market and differentiate the source of your product, learn the stories and know the truth about where your food comes from is a matter of individual choice. This student who researched the summer market at Carpentras and easily obtained anecdotes and evidence that certain sales techniques were working - did what many of us should do ourselves no matter where we shop.

On Wednesdays here in Lyon at the Place Carnot there is an evening producers' market. The rule that producers only can sell there is strictly enforced. They are well attended although I can say that because they are out of the way and not at a regular market hour they don't get the traffic that St.Antoine does on the weekends.

Only three regular vendors there are also selling their product at St. Antoine. I can count on one hand the number of actual gardeners who come with the occasional chicken or rabbit to the St. Antoine market that I know to be producers. But that doesn't make the market a place of mass fraud, does it?

One you have shopped a market for a year or two you know which stalls to go directly to. A quick glance can tell you easily if a new stand on any given day is worth a second look. As for producers, their product varies throughout the year, and the pickings can be slim from time to time. I know for example, that purchasing my celery root from one particular fellow is going to get me a fresh solid tasty root unlike what I get from anyone else, although they might not be regularly sized or shaped.

When the season is harsh, the local producers deserve the regular's patronage because the people going to the market with big eyes popping out like they are at some park attraction are going to go straight to the girl in the corset and lace coverlet who has stacked 27 celery roots in gothic pyramydal formations, each root perfectly round and ironically the exact size of the 34DDs nestled in her cotton gossamer.

Both local product coming from regional depots and the local producers material will clearly be a completely different product than the stuff coming in from hothouses from abroad. By law, in France, the country of origin has to be marked and especially this time of year (winter) we see many distant countries represented. This is a present-day reality. No myth to debunk.

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Thank you for your (as always expert) local insights, Lucy.

Here's a portion of what William Grimes had to say about Market Day in Provence in his review in The New York Times last weekend:

'Ms. de La Pradelle, an ethnologist who was sent by the French government to analyze public markets, spent years scrutinizing the goods and the behavior and the underlying rules governing the market in Carpentras. Her findings amount to a cold shower for anyone, like myself, who has constructed a rich fantasy life around such places. All those farm-fresh fruits and vegetables, those delectable cheeses, those mouth-watering pâtés, come from the same wholesalers who supply the stores. The region switched over to large-scale industrial farming way back in the 1920's. "A market is a collectively produced anachronism, and in this it responds to deeply contemporary logic," she says.'

bleudauvergne   On Wednesdays here in Lyon at the Place Carnot there is an evening producers' market. The rule that producers only can sell there is strictly enforced. They are well attended although I can say that because they are out of the way and not at a regular market hour they don't get the traffic that St.Antoine does on the weekends.

Indeed. Please see Post # 30, above.

Edited by jamiemaw (log)

from the thinly veneered desk of:

Jamie Maw

Food Editor

Vancouver magazine

www.vancouvermagazine.com

Foodblog: In the Belly of the Feast - Eating BC

"Profumo profondo della mia carne"

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I've read post 30 and I'm not sure what you are trying to say. Yes, the producers market at Place Carnot does not do the business of the St. Antoine weekend market, or indeed we had Italians being punished for dressing like peasants to sneak fraudulent goods into certain markets in Torino the 1400s?

In any case, there is a whole lot of generalizing going on and the goal seems suspect to me. Anyone can take reality and exagerrate to the limit of truth and hype it with some spin - market vendors, snake oil salesmen, and journalists alike. It's when you get a combination of the three that things start getting obnoxious. :laugh:

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In any case, there is a whole lot of generalizing going on and the goal seems suspect to me.  Anyone can take reality and exagerrate to the limit of truth and hype it with some spin

Especially obnoxious when the generalization is actually based on a tiny part of reality — in this case, the market of Carpentras, period.

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I've read post 30 and I'm not sure what you are trying to say.  Yes, the producers market at Place Carnot does not do the business of the St. Antoine weekend market, or indeed we had Italians being punished  for dressing like peasants to sneak fraudulent goods into certain markets in Torino the 1400s?

In any case, there is a whole lot of generalizing going on and the goal seems suspect to me.  Anyone can take reality and exagerrate to the limit of truth and hype it with some spin - market vendors, snake oil salesmen, and journalists alike.  It's when you get a combination of the three that things start getting obnoxious.   :laugh:

As to your first question: Neither, quite. :smile:

I was using the historical example to support your observation at Place Carnot, i.e. that market operators occasionally segregate producers from middlemen. In the case of Bologna in the early 1400's, you might argue that they took the punishment of perps to extremes. Gelding the lily, so to speak.

Thanks for your example; in our own market culture, especially at large civic markets such as Granville Island, beginning in the early summer that segregation becomes both less clear and more clear. Less clear because middlemen also begin to sell local product; more clear because local farmers selling their own product are isolated in a special area to sell from their trucks.

From what I have read thus far, one of de la Pradelle's points is that it is sometimes difficult, and not just for the casual observer, to make that distinction. To that I would add, as I have previously, that the challenge in making this distinction is available to consumers globally and has been for centuries. At least that's the point that I'll likely make in the chapter that I'm currently researching.

Finally, I don't know that de la Pradelle’s sample was too general; in fact some (such as Ptipois) might reasonably argue that the research was too specific. I found her observations by turns amusing, illuminating and well-researched, and based on them, can at least partly understand the collective nerve that they hit when originally published, perhaps intensified when it won a literary prize.

Perhaps its translation into English, and even its discussion here (at least of a brief excerpt), might be seen to have a similar effect. :biggrin:

Of course the antithetic argument might be the more persuasive. And that is that any deception doesn't really matter at all, simply because the food products of rural France are so superior, even at the Depot level, as to convince even the most discerning. :cool:

Edited by jamiemaw (log)

from the thinly veneered desk of:

Jamie Maw

Food Editor

Vancouver magazine

www.vancouvermagazine.com

Foodblog: In the Belly of the Feast - Eating BC

"Profumo profondo della mia carne"

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As I read this thread, I feel a bit suspicious of the frisson of "Exposé!" that seems to be crackling about it. While I think Steven's got a good point, my thoughts are a bit different and more mundane, I think, similar to Lucy's but in a New England context.

This whole thing seems slightly off to me, I realize, because my experience at local farmers' markets is not devoted to the search for countrified goodness, whatever that is, but is instead built around the reliability of the relationships I have formed with the producers there. Since I've gotten to know a bit the folks running the CSA to which I belong and some of the farmers who sell at our local weekly markets, I don't have to worry so much about being duped by peat-covered potatoes and gingham-wrapped jams.

Knowing actual people gives the lie to the consumption of faux "authenticity" that lurks around this entire affair like a bad toupee. I'm not sure that this study takes that cliché about human relationships very seriously, perhaps because the typical shopper doesn't either. Having said that, I'd bet a franc that, like me, Lucy is at her market to buy local produce, not to buy the experience of buying local produce.

Chris Amirault

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As I read this thread, I feel a bit suspicious of the frisson of "Exposé!" that seems to be crackling about it. While I think Steven's got a good point, my thoughts are a bit different and more mundane, I think, similar to Lucy's but in a New England context.

This whole thing seems slightly off to me, I realize, because my experience at local farmers' markets is not devoted to the search for countrified goodness, whatever that is, but is instead built around the reliability of the relationships I have formed with the producers there. Since I've gotten to know a bit the folks running the CSA to which I belong and some of the farmers who sell at our local weekly markets, I don't have to worry so much about being duped by peat-covered potatoes and  gingham-wrapped jams.

Knowing actual people gives the lie to the consumption of faux "authenticity" that lurks around this entire affair like a bad toupee. I'm not sure that this study takes that cliché about human relationships very seriously, perhaps because the typical shopper doesn't either. Having said that, I'd bet a franc that, like me, Lucy is at her market to buy local produce, not to buy the experience of buying local produce.

Well put, Chris, and certainly more so for the initiated. Although the book was originally greeted as an expose, when it's all said and done the rural machinations it speaks to are just very funny: bumpkin pie?

Edited by jamiemaw (log)

from the thinly veneered desk of:

Jamie Maw

Food Editor

Vancouver magazine

www.vancouvermagazine.com

Foodblog: In the Belly of the Feast - Eating BC

"Profumo profondo della mia carne"

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[Ptipois]   Modest stalls, few produce, and diversified: a few chickens, two or three bunches of radish, a few bunches of cress or hairy leeks, three crates of ugly potatoes and sandy carrots. Apple with spots on them. Six half-pounds of butter, hand-shaped into balls.

So much of the concept of the French idyll (a bike or canal boat ride through the countryside, stopping at a market to gather supplies for a picnic) is based on this ripe artifice that it appears, up close, like that amusing pastime of sacred cow tipping.

Or merely merde de cheval.

"Merde de cheval"?

(First of all there is no such expression in France. The word is crottin.)

I was clearly referring, in that post, to real small producers whom I happen to have acknowledged in several country, suburban and even city markets. Your reply is somewhat abrupt and keeps missing the point. I never heard of Mme de La Pradelle and her book at the time, visibly she was more of a hit overseas than in her own country. Wonder why. I will reject the hypothesis that her book was ostracized by a foaming-at-the-seams population of those perfid (but so picturesque) French threatened in their shameful practices, for I don't think they'd have felt that a study on one single market would put them in any particular danger. Now the lady may be an acceptable anthropologist, but here is the big, pertinent question: can she shop? Is she a skilled shopper? Can she tell small-producer root celery from bleached, calibrated root-celery at first sight and touch? I'd suspect she doesn't. Maybe (as her name would imply) her maid does the shopping for her while she's doing her research. Maybe, in that case, the maid should have helped in the research too.

At about the same time as when her book was published in French, I was a researcher and writer on a book project — a guidebook of Paris and suburban markets — that was quite well documented. The guidebook wasn't reissued by Hachette for profitability reasons but we learned a lot about the subject. Now we weren't backed by "the French government" to study a single market in a touristy region but we did search with much application all the markets of the Paris area. And since, as a writer, I am specialized in products and shopping, I always have a particularly acute interest in markets wherever I go. So you see, as I said, when I see a thread title like "the myth of the French 'country' market" I tend to be attracted by it. And when I see that some people are just too happy to pounce on one very particular and limited example (notwithstanding the fact that, as every research in "sciences humaines", the objective and methods of the research are often more significant than the subject itself) and give a bad name to the "French country market", all regions included, well sorry, that won't do.

And while I'm at it, I fail to grasp the pertinence in your mention of the Dior dresses (Dior, really?)and high-heeled shoes for the farmers' daughters. You did that twice, as if it had any significance. Now girls like to dress up everywhere in the world when they have a chance, whatever their social origin. In what way was that a proof of the inauthenticity of Auvergnat farmers? Maybe you think they should have stuck to the layered wool sweaters sung by Vialatte and perhaps straw-filled wooden clogs in order to stay in their place?

Edited by Ptipois (log)
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[Ptipois]   Modest stalls, few produce, and diversified: a few chickens, two or three bunches of radish, a few bunches of cress or hairy leeks, three crates of ugly potatoes and sandy carrots. Apple with spots on them. Six half-pounds of butter, hand-shaped into balls.

So much of the concept of the French idyll (a bike or canal boat ride through the countryside, stopping at a market to gather supplies for a picnic) is based on this ripe artifice that it appears, up close, like that amusing pastime of sacred cow tipping.

Or merely merde de cheval.

"Merde de cheval"?

(First of all there is no such expression in France. The word is crottin.)

Now the lady may be an acceptable anthropologist, but here is the big, pertinent question: can she shop? Is she a skilled shopper? Can she tell small-producer root celery from bleached, calibrated root-celery at first sight and touch? I'd suspect she doesn't. Maybe (as her name would imply) her maid does the shopping for her while she's doing her research. Maybe, in that case, the maid should have helped in the research too.

Bit unfair, don't you think?

Besides, I thought French women were genetically predisposed to shop well. :laugh:

I'm on the pavement

Thinking about the government.

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[Ptipois]  Modest stalls, few produce, and diversified: a few chickens, two or three bunches of radish, a few bunches of cress or hairy leeks, three crates of ugly potatoes and sandy carrots. Apple with spots on them. Six half-pounds of butter, hand-shaped into balls.

So much of the concept of the French idyll (a bike or canal boat ride through the countryside, stopping at a market to gather supplies for a picnic) is based on this ripe artifice that it appears, up close, like that amusing pastime of sacred cow tipping.

Or merely merde de cheval.

"Merde de cheval"?

(First of all there is no such expression in France. The word is crottin.)

Now the lady may be an acceptable anthropologist, but here is the big, pertinent question: can she shop? Is she a skilled shopper? Can she tell small-producer root celery from bleached, calibrated root-celery at first sight and touch? I'd suspect she doesn't. Maybe (as her name would imply) her maid does the shopping for her while she's doing her research. Maybe, in that case, the maid should have helped in the research too.

Bit unfair, don't you think?

Besides, I thought French women were genetically predisposed to shop well. :laugh:

Not unfair at all. I too get the distinct impression that the person who did this initial body of research, although a talented and passionate writer, had a very bourgeois tendency blur the idea of a blue collar worker and a rural peasant. She was unable to distinguish the difference and her dissapointment at the reality gave her a start. The bitter and cynical assumption that every gesture by the vendors at the market is by design intended to dupe and trick the patrons into buying "fake goods" clearly comes from her dissapointment at not being able to find any "real peasants". They're all the same to Mme de la Pradelle, who in the end is suprised and shocked to see that some small business owners actually do exercise a certain level of sales technique.

Ptit Pois notes and very rightly so that clearly at the time of her research this person obviously could not tell the difference between fresh local produce and industrially produced imports of the kind sold in supermarkets. The local produce, yes, sometimes aquired by vendors from depots where local producers sell them, is not even close to what we find in supermarkets here. The statement (who said it?) that both local outdoor market vendors and supermarkets shop at the same depots is patently false. The logistical channels are not the same.

Take a look around. To assume or expect that everything sold at the outdoor rural markets of France is being sold by the people who actually labored in the field indicates that you come from a naive, sheltered existence.

To pretend that any business owner referring to goods that he or she sells as their own is unethical is also naive. How many times have you seen an employee of any business say "our products..." how many times have you actually considered that person to be lying?

We see that Mme de Pradelle managed to dig up one person who admitted having told a customer that he made a pate himself in order to get her to taste it. He admits that he lied. Does this give any researcher license to spread the blanket over the country of France and say that this person's lack of ethic applies everywhere? Hardly. It was something that really bothered me, reading the exerpt, and the assumptions put forth on this thread.

This question came to mind when I went looking for andouillette at Les Halles yesterday. I was asking a woman at the Bobosse stand about the difference between the Beaujolais style and the house "Bobosse" style andouilette, both of which they sell. In her description of the production technique, she said "We wrap the chitterlings like this and then draw them through the casings with a string. The Beaujolais andouilettes are stuffed with ground chitterlings." - Yes, she referred to the product she was selling as her own. Under no circumstance during our transaction did I assume she meant that she herself had actually made the andouilette. It was clear in my mind from the start that she was an employee of the Bobosse company that produces, in the local region, a very nice andouillette. Fake? Not even close.

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Since, as far as I can tell, nobody on the thread has actually read the book except jamiemaw, and nobody at all has met the woman who wrote it, and nobody's bothered to discuss her view of the Carpentras market based on their own experience there, attacks like "Maybe (as her name would imply) her maid does the shopping for her while she's doing her research. Maybe, in that case, the maid should have helped in the research too") are simply unfounded and indeed patently unfair.

And, in fact, whether she can shop her way out of a paper sac-a-main is irrelevant to her case. If the markets are shot through with mock paysans in rented sabots (Ok, not in Caprentras), then they are, whether it's the buyer's fault for not being able to tell the real from the fake, or a vast rural conspiracy to prey on our yearning for the good old days. Or just the way people make a living.

In fact, at one level who cares who the seller is? If the cherries are sweet, the saucisson tangy and the bread crisp, who cares whether they were produced by the same hands that are now taking your money, or bought at the warehouse earlier that day. We don't expect the butcher to raise all his own meat, why should the produce guy have to grow all his own fruit.

I've never been to the Capentras Market, but I have stumbled through a few of the markets in that neighborhood (Orange, Villefranche, Isle-Sur-la-Sorgue, Bonnieux) and given the mix of venders I saw -- even leaving aside the sellers of bootleg CD's, cicada-shaped soap and "authentic" provencal tablecloths -- it would hardly surprise me that there's a high percentage non-farmers hawking non-local produce there. As you know, those markets are a bit like festivals, and overrun by tourists, half the fun is the energy and the bavardage with neighbors and vendors. A lot of the produce is mediocre; perhapse those are the wholesale buyers. I'm sure the savvy locals and a few sharp-eyed tourists have favorite sellers and get great food, much of it from producers. I'm sure a lot of other people get so-so stuff from other vendors.

I think if we don't look on what may well be a reasonable observation about at least one market as a grievous affront to the French people, we can accept that, as sellers of all types have been doing since sales began, even the vendors within the Carpentras market stalls may be selling a bit of poetry with their produce -- and finding many eager to buy.

I'm on the pavement

Thinking about the government.

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Not unfair at all.  I too get the distinct impression that the person who did this initial body of research, although a talented and passionate writer, had a very bourgeois tendency blur the idea of a blue collar worker and a rural peasant.  She was unable to distinguish the difference and her dissapointment at the reality gave her a start. 

The bitter and cynical assumption that every gesture by the vendors at the market is by design intended to dupe and trick the patrons into buying "fake goods" clearly comes from her dissapointment at not being able to find any "real peasants".  They're all the same to Mme de la Pradelle, who in the end is suprised and shocked to see that some small business owners actually do exercise a certain level of sales technique. 

Ptit Pois notes and very rightly so that clearly at the time of her research this person  obviously could not tell the difference between fresh local produce and industrially produced imports of the kind sold in supermarkets.  The local produce, yes, sometimes aquired by vendors from depots where local producers sell them, is not even close to what we find in supermarkets here.  The statement  (who said it?) that both local outdoor market vendors and supermarkets shop at the same depots is patently false.  The logistical channels are not the same. 

Take a look around.  To assume or expect that everything sold at the outdoor rural markets of France is being sold by the people who actually labored in the field indicates that you come from a naive, sheltered existence. 

Amen.

I'm going to tell you a story.

About 15 years ago, I was spending a few days' vacation with a friend in a posh Normandy resort, right at the château of a very famous aristocratic — and wealthy, which isn't necessarily the case with aristocracy — family. My friend was "hired" for the Summer by the Lady because, as a beautician, she could provide her with her very special face massage every other day.

We were lodged in a small building in the outskirts of the château grounds, never saw much of the Lord and Lady, let alone their relatives. However, we grew very cordial relationships with their various employees: chauffeur, maids, gardener. Every morning, the gardener would bring us a basketful of fresh vegetables from the château garden. Beautiful carrots, leeks, turnips, potatoes, peas, squash, onions, etc. Once I asked: "Don't your employers resent your giving us all those vegetables?" He said: "You kidding? They only eat frozen vegetables. They won't touch the fresh ones. Once the cook tried to serve them vegetables from the garden and they hated them — too strong, etc. The next day she served them frozen vegetables and they said: "Ah, that's the real thing!" Since then, all the employees have been sharing the garden vegetables between themselves and cook buys frozen vegetables for the masters. Masters still believe that they eat garden vegetables."

So there was an arrangement that suited everybody, even though Their Lordships didn't know what was really going on. They were so remote from "ordinary people" and, shall I say, from the true nature of everyday things that they didn't even notice something was wrong. Actually, they liked it the wrong way. I couldn't help thinking of that when I read about Mme de La Pradelle and the results of her research.

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Since, as far as I can tell, nobody on the thread has actually read the book except jamiemaw, and nobody at all has met the woman who wrote it, and nobody's bothered to discuss her view of the Carpentras market based on their own experience there, attacks like "Maybe (as her name would imply) her maid does the shopping for her while she's doing her research. Maybe, in that case, the maid should have helped in the research too") are simply unfounded and indeed patently unfair.

I don't think I have been unfair at all. And I haven't accused this fine lady of all the terrible things I described, I did so as an hypothesis, as a possible element that could invalidate her credibility, though nobody seems to have wondered about it. I wrote that her personal ability to shop and know her produce was an essential, but untold, condition of the validity of her study, and that nobody had pointed that out before, taking her report at face value. Why study the market of Carpentras in the first place? What was the object of the research before the research even started? Why not try, for instance, the Marché des Lices in Rennes, one of the most famous produce markets in France, instead of heavily touristy (and therefore untypical) Provence? When a piece of writing gets inflated to become a "revelation" about a whole country, while the study is only done on one small town, I think it's only natural that some people stand up and point out how biased the approach is.

I think if we don't look on what may well be a reasonable observation about at least one market as a grievous affront to the French people,

I'm sorry, but the title of the thread is "The Myth of the French Country Market". Not even of "the Provençal Market". Enough said. I probably wouldn't have reacted that strongly in the latter case.

And it is not "at least one market". It is ONE MARKET, period. Not to say that this is the only market functioning that way, but indeed it is a study. The study is done on one market, not two, not three. The least that may be expected from a scientific approach is to widen the field of study. Now my blame is not on Mme de La Pradelle who perhaps only intended to study this particular market. It is on the people who use this study to draw conclusions on French markets in general.

Anthropologists had it easy in the old days. They could roam the world and study Papoos, Trobriandais, people from Vanuatu, Jivaros, etc. Given the cultural, technical and transportation means available to the objects of research, it was very unlikely that any Papoo, Trobriandais, etc., would write a reply stating "Sorry, Anthropologist, but you got it all wrong. You've interpreted our culture through the prism of your own, and indeed we don't do such and such a thing for the reasons you mention, and you got confused between detail and globality, the partial and the general, and when we do this or that it doesn't mean what you say, etc." There was no opportunity for the picturesque and so exotic indigène to say his mind and take an active, albeit antagonistic, part in the anthropology of his culture. Sometimes, here on eGullet, I read things about France and I have the definite feeling that some of the posters have no idea that the Internet is an open space, that some French people have actually learned English and happen to read the forums, and may resent being described as zoo animals and their markets as gatherings of exotic bemustached con-artists. Well, now, here is one of those quaint indigènes replying, and telling you things from the inside. Furthermore, an indigène who has carefully studied the subject of markets in France. And Lucy was not born a French indigène but she has certainly become one, through her long and sensible experience of living here. Now this book by Mme de La Pradelle is probably interesting, but I believe it's abusive to stretch its obviously very limited scope to a more universal dimension, however seductive that may be for the sake of romanticism or anti-romanticism (two sides of the same error).

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And I haven't accused this fine lady of all the terrible things I described

A fine line indeed between implication and accusation.

wrote that her personal ability to shop and know her produce was an essential, but untold, condition of the validity of her study, and that nobody had pointed that out before, taking her report at face value.

Her ability to shop in no way affects whether the market stall owners are indeed producers or just picking up their produce at the wholesaler and posturing as the indigènes you reference further down to make a euro from the unwary. Her market basket, yes, but not her conclusions.

Why study the market of Carpentras in the first place? What was the object of the research before the research even started? Why not try, for instance, the Marché des Lices in Rennes, one of the most famous produce markets in France, instead of heavily touristy (and therefore untypical) Provence?

Probably because they are the more celebrated markets. I don't think a study (or a fluffy celebrations) of the markets of Picardie would attract much attention (though it probably should).

I'm sorry, but the title of the thread is "The Myth of the French Country Market". Not even of "the Provençal Market". Enough said. I probably wouldn't have reacted that strongly in the latter case.

But the book itself is called "Market Day in Provence." I think we ought to at least get the subject of the book right while discussing it.

Sometimes, here on eGullet, read things about France and I have the definite feeling that some of the posters have no idea that the Internet is an open space, that some French people have actually learned English and happen to read the forums, and may resent being described as zoo animals and their markets as gatherings of exotic bemustached con-artists.

The book was written by a French person, so the negative impressions at the heart of this discussion are home grown. I don't recall any particularly negative descriptions of The French, as a people, in this thread. If you are offended by what Americans say about the French, you should see what we say about one another. (The French, by the way, have had something of a cottage industry in analyzing Americans since the days of de Tocqueville.)

If you're referring to me, I'd be curious to see what you found disturbing, and will likely be happy to remove it.

Well, now, here is one of those quaint indigènes replying, and telling you things from the inside.

I have always found you interesting. The word quaint has never occurred to me, though. :laugh:

I have no doubt that Marché des Lices in Rennes is wonderful, as are Lucy's stalls in Lyon, I'm still waiting for ainside information specific to the books provencal focus.

For me, I'm hoping to spend a little time in Mme La Pradelle's back yard this summer (sadly, probably won't get as far Rennes), and intend to carry on further research on this subject. I will report back. Perhaps we can meet up and do a little cross-cultural peer review on Mme La Pradelle's thesis -- or at least find some decent melons for dinner. :wink:

I'm on the pavement

Thinking about the government.

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I don't recall any particularly negative descriptions of The French, as a people, in this thread.
Another fantasy destroyed! :biggrin:  I can't decide by what you wrote whether that should make us hate the French or admire them (or both?) :blink:

Oh, admire them, if only because nobody plays the French card quite the way the French do.

Indeed, there is a fine line between implication and accusation.

And, in fact, whether she can shop her way out of a paper sac-a-main is irrelevant to her case. If the markets are shot through with mock paysans in rented sabots (Ok, not in Caprentras), then they are, whether it's the buyer's fault for not being able to tell the real from the fake, or a vast rural conspiracy to prey on our yearning for the good old days. Or just the way people make a living.

Nice afterthought. I can talk to you about a few of the markets of Provence, because I shop there several weeks a year. In the course of our errands, we shop the Cours Lafayette market in Toulon and a smaller one in the city as well, as well as the market at La Garde from time to time. We find lots of very good fresh local foodstuff in these markets that we would not find elsewhere. Thinking about these markets, I don't recall any of them being 'shot through with mock paysans in rented sabots' anywhere.

When someone really wants to see 'mock paysans', they appear - you either see them, or you see, in an environment charged with competition, a choice of local produce and products being offered by people who are in the business of selling them. When you have been to a market a few times, the newness of the sales techniques in this environment becomes secondary. You'll see that what you may label as 'mock paysans' is actually people out making a living. Whether they have the connections and the ability to get exclusive and choice local products is for you to decide.

Her ability to shop in no way affects whether the market stall owners are indeed producers or just picking up their produce at the wholesaler and posturing as the indigènes you reference further down to make a euro from the unwary.

Ignoring the inflamatory way this is worded, I think busboy has raised a good point that deserves an answer. Why is being able to judge the quality of the produce on offer important in being able to make any kind of study the market culture? Because this is where the truth of the market lies. To publish an 'exposé' on the markets requires a certain understanding of the products being sold there. These are products to judiciously choose from, and judging the best products and choosing accordingly is not a passive shopping stroll in which you naively accuse a vendor who invites you to taste his plums that he is fraudlently implying that he picked them himself. (read the exerpt, the author really goes that far.)

The reason why this whole accusation of fraud at the markets is offensive to some is that the outdoor markets are not the supermarkets, and to falsely claim that all of the products sold come from the Carrfour logistics center in Nante is harmful slander. Local wholesalers do provide a great service in getting good fresh products to market, and there is nothing wrong with that.

To make accusations of fraud, be it indictable or 'barely indictable' means that this very important element of French food culture is under attack of the same slander. And when something this important is under attack, whether through government funded academic 'studies', by sloppy press, or by people who just think it's fun to poke fun, it is necessary to answer.

In my view, if my access to fresh local produce was curtailed by for example, a suppresion of funding for certain markets based on 'studies' of this sort, it would be a real tragedy.

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Those quotes hardly strike me as particualrly inflammatory -- more tongue-in-cheek ("those wiley Frenchmen") than anything else. They are certainly less inflammatory than the book itself.

I should point out that phrase "shot through with mock paysans" was meant as a bit of a parody of those who are finding cold-blooded wholesalers behind every cart, it was never an assetrtion that the markets were indeed "shot though."

More to the point of that paragraph, whether or not the majority of the vendors are selling farm-produced products or picked up their wares at the warhouse has nothing to do with whether you, me, the author or anyone else is shopping. It's a statistic that is independent of that shopper (at least in the short run). Thus, attempting to debunk the author by denigrating her shopping skills -- on evidence that is at best flimsy -- does nothing to affect the validity of her conclusions.

I haven't been to the markets in Toulon, so I don't know how many vendors there are. But I'll wager that you -- as I do here in the U.S. and did in Provence -- pass by many stalls for every one you patronize. I'll also wager that you -- as do I -- spend your time looking at the produce and cheese, not analyzing the seller's outfit or wasting too much time trying to trace the exact chain-of-evidence of what they're selling. This makes it entirely possible, probable, even, that you are passing by the vendors Mme La Pradelle condemns and patronizing the artisanal producers you praise.

You both could be right.

It appears to me that the French government is doing all it can to protect its farmes, much to the displeasure of most of the world. And I suspect that the real danger to markets themselves is that French shoppers will decide that Carrefour is more convenient, less expensive and almost as good as the markets, and withdraw their support -- not the occasional government study.

Indeed, taking a good look at the markets and ensuring that they are as "advertised" -- the source of small-producer, high-quality food -- might be a good way to ensure quality in the stalls and customers lining up before them. It's an approach that has worked for everything from cheese to chickens, why not markets, as well?

I'm on the pavement

Thinking about the government.

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Thus, attempting to debunk the author by denigrating her shopping skills -- on evidence that is at best flimsy -- does nothing to affect the validity of her conclusions.

Oh yes, the question on her shopping skills is quite relevant in this case. In sciences humaines, the individual doing the research cannot be separated from the research itself. How well the researcher can identify the nature of produce available and understand the implications of their origins, whether "home grown" or grown by other producers that may well be offering high-quality produce, is directly correlated to the conclusions he or she will draw from the study. Because the market stall owners may well be controlled and checked by the State, but who controls the researcher? Who checks her methods and validates her conclusions? Knowing a bit about markets (and remaining suspicious of the Carpentras market in the Summer), I believe that whether some practices are really "a fraud" or not is largely a matter of interpretation. Now, on top of the bargain, even if Mme de La Pradelle was rather fair and mild in her conclusions (indeed she isn't remembered for having upturned the apple cart, as a matter of fact her book is hardly remembered at all in France except for a few sociologists), some readers are all too ready to add new layers on the "fraud" topic just because it suits them to believe so.

The situation is actually much more simple than it is made to look: in French markets (most of them municipally managed, or département, or region-run), if fraud happens, whether on the quality, origin, freshness, category, etc., of produce, it is severely punished. The regulations are drastic. And whatever is not a fraud is legal. And everything that is not legal is a fraud. There is no middle ground, either you have a fraud or you don't. So it is pretty infuriating to read the words "unindictable fraud" (on top of the poorly inspired "The myth of the French 'country' market" which is already quite hard to stomach), because if it is a fraud, it should and can be indicted. If it can't be indicted, it can't be a fraud in the first place. What is described as an "indictable fraud" deserves to be judged in order to find out if it is really a fraud or not, not just hasty interpretations or the result of irrational expectations. And indeed that's where knowing your produce and the true conditions of local food production and distribution is crucial.

So this is why I seriously question the poor choice of words that led to the title and subtitle of this thread. It doesn't require reading the de La Pradelle book to realize right from the start that something is wrong. The problem, as far as I know, is not necessarily in the book. It is in the words, and in the slant that was adopted right from the start in this thread.

Edited by Ptipois (log)
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