At a halal butcher in West Philadelphia, a smell sends Hiba and Talha toward different formations of Islamic tradition. Well, more precisely, their divergent affective responses to this smell that motivate Hiba to shop at the more expensive and Arab-oriented market down the street and keep Talha coming to the butcher with the more working-class, ethnically mixed, and traditionalist clientele. For Hiba, the odor in the butcher shop that “smells a little suss" and feels "tight." For Talha, it smells "intimate" and reminds him of markets that he used to frequent in Canada. In this presentation, I compare these two affective responses to a smell and analyze their consequences for the formation of Islamic tradition. I argue that smells lend a felt authenticity to formations of difference, or the shifting relationships that cohere and differentiate bodies to groups. In this case, the suss//intimate response to a damp ferrous smell enfold social status and diasporic identity into Islamic tradition. Comparison of these two responses to a single smell shows how changes to Islamic tradition occur at a local, embodied level in ways that cascade into larger formations of difference. I situate these formations of difference in reference to urban displacement and community formation in Philadelphia, based on 12 months of fieldwork at halal businesses in Philadelphia and digital mapping of those institutions. Ultimately, this affective comparison shows how the senses and sensibilities of bodies serve as a kind of matrix through which Islamic tradition is refracted and enacted.
Max's research focuses on Islamic material and visual culture, embodiment, and emotions. His dissertation examines Halal consumption in Philadelphia using a combination of ethnographic and digital humanistic methods in order to understand how Islamic traditions, racialization, and the contingencies of urban life give halal consumer goods their purchase.