Fasting and Feasting: The Politics and Poetics of Ramadan and Eid al Fitr

The holy month of Ramadan and the practice of fasting and feasting constitute one of the cornerstones of the Muslim faith. In recent decades popular media and academic debates have increasingly turned their attention to how morality and religiosity can coexist with growing commercialization of Ramadan across the world. In this talk I want to side-step these worn-out debates and instead focus on how Ramadan practices are increasingly impacted by global crises that affect us all: climate change, food security, and the financialization of food-ways. To round off my talk I will share insights from my research with lower-class communities in Morocco as an example of how religious rituals can serve as useful lenses onto broader socio-economic dynamics