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About

Fareen Parvez's current research looks at predatory lending and its relationship to other forms of exploitation in low-income neighborhoods in India. This work draws on in-depth interviews and ethnographic observation among Muslim and Dalit communities. Her previous research focused on the relationship between politics and religion, through the method of comparative ethnography. Her book, Politicizing Islam: the Islamic Revival in France and India (Oxford University Press, 2017; expected re-release in 2022), draws on two years of participant observation among Muslim communities in Lyon, France, and Hyderabad, India. In this book she demonstrates how social class relations and types of state secularism impact the varieties of Islamic movements taking place in secular democracies. For some short essays related to this research, see: "The problem with liberalizing Islam," "A view from the margins of the banlieue," or "Politicizing Islam: An introduction." Her work has also appeared in such publications as NewsweekSalonThe Guardian, and LA Times among others.

Other ongoing research projects include a qualitative study on faith healing in Fez, Morocco, and a collaborative study of a major land occupation struggle called La ZAD in western France. Her work has been supported by the Social Science Research Council, the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Society for the Social Scientific Study of Religion, and the Network for the Social Scientific Study of Science and Religion. 

As a committed public sociologist, she writes with the Debt Justice Working Group of the Progressive International and with various other forums. Parvez was a 2019-20 member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Her courses include the sociology of religion, social theory, contemporary Marxist theory, and ethnographic methods. Parvez is a senior research scholar with the UMass Resistance Studies Initiative.

Selected Publications