Abstract :
[en] A large body of literature currently exists regarding the relationship between food and Islamic religion in contemporary world. Works mostly address dietary prescriptions, often using a comparative approach, and the way in which people negotiate with them in the global era.
Besides this, a little prominence is given to the role of Islamic religion into the very same culinary practices exerted daily. Based on ethnographic experience, my article aims at highlighting this role, exploring the everyday lives of Moroccan Muslim women living in Milan hinterland.
The assumption of my ongoing doctoral research in anthropology, from which this paper stems, consists of the adherence to a praxeological approach to subjectivation (Warnier 2001): it focuses on the construction of human selves through material culture. As a matter of fact, observing Moroccan women living in context of migration, I studied how they shape themselves trough daily micro-practices (De Certeau 1980). In particular, while cooking these women revealed me, inter alia, how complex is the interaction between food and Islamic religion; interaction which cannot be reduced to dietary prescriptions since it also involves the ways in which dished are prepared, served and consumed. In my paper I will try to explain such complexity through ethnographic examples. Furthermore, I will attempt to show how, in the context under analysis, the public performing of food practices and related objects is functional to the declaration of a shared religious identity in “acceptable” (since artistic) terms. Visual materials (photos and videos) will support such attempts.
De Certeau, Michel. L’invention du quotidien. Tome I. Arts de faire. Gallimard, Paris 1980
Warnier Jean-Pierre. A praxeological approach to subjectivation in a material world, in Journal of Material Culture, Vol. 6(1): 5–24, 2001
