[en] Despite calls for cross-cultural research, Minority world perspectives still dominate death and bereavement studies, emphasizing individualized emotions and neglecting contextual diversities. In research concerned with contemporary African societies, on the other hand, death and loss are generally subsumed within concerns about AIDS or poverty, with little attention paid to the emotional and personal significance of a death. Here, we draw on interactionist sociology to present major themes from a qualitative study of family deaths in urban Senegal, theoretically framed through the duality of meanings-in-context. Such themes included family and community as support and motivation; religious beliefs and practices as frameworks for solace and (regulatory) meaning; and material circumstances as these are intrinsically bound up with emotions. Although we identify the experience of (embodied, emotional) pain as a common response across Minority and Majority worlds, we also explore significant divergencies, varying according to localized contexts and broader power dynamics.
Disciplines :
Human geography & demography
Author, co-author :
McCarthy, Jane Ribbens; University of Reading, UK
Evans, Ruth; Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
Bowlby, Sophie; University of Reading, UK
Wouango, Joséphine ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département des sciences sociales > Département des sciences sociales
Language :
English
Title :
Making Sense of Family Deaths in Urban Senegal: Diversities, Contexts, and Comparisons
Agence Nationale de Statistique et de la Démographie. (2013). Rapport de la deuxième enquête de suivi de la pauvreté au Sénégal de 2011 (ESPS II)[Second Survey Report of Senegal Poverty Monitoring 2011 (ESPS II)]. Dakar, Senegal: Ministère de l’Economie et des Finances, République du Sénégal.
Agence Nationale de Statistique et de la Démographie. (2014). Recensement général de la population et de l’habitat, de l’agriculture et de l’elevage 2013, Rapport définitif [General census of population and housing, agriculture and livestock 2013, final report]. Dakar, Senegal: ANSD & Ministère de l’Economie, des Finances et du Plan, République du Sénégal.
Alladin W., (2015). The Islamic way of death and dying: Homeward bound. In Parkes C.M., Laungani P., Young W., (Eds.), Death and bereavement across cultures (2nd ed., pp. 110–132). London, England: Routledge.
Ba M., (1980/2008). So long a letter. London, England: Heinemann.
Bass L., Sow F., (2006). Senegalese families: The confluence of ethnicity, history and social change. In Oheneba-Sakyi Y., Takyi B., (Eds.), African families at the turn of the 21st century (pp. 83–102). Westport, CT: Praeger.
Beck S., De Vreyer P., Lambert S., Marazyan K., Safir A., (2015). Child fostering in Senegal. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 46, 57–73.
Becker G., Xander C. J., Blum H. E., Lutterbach J., Momm F., Gysels M., Higginson I. J., (2007). Do religious or spiritual beliefs influence bereavement? A systematic review. Palliative Medicine, 21(3), 207–217.
Bhambra G. K., Santos B., (2017). Introduction: Global challenges for sociology. Sociology, 51, 3–10.
Bonanno G. A., Papa A., Lalande K., Zhang N., Noll J. G., (2005). Grief processing and deliberate grief avoidance: A prospective comparison of bereaved spouses and parents in the United States and the People’s Republic of China. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 73, 86–98.
Bowlby S., (2012) Recognising the time—Space dimensions of care: Caringscapes and carescapes. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 44(9), 2101–2118.
Bowlby S., Evans R., Ribbens McCarthy J., Wouango J., (in progress) Time-space practices of care after a family death in urban Senegal. Manuscript submitted for publication
Breen L. J., O’Connor M., (2007). The fundamental paradox in the grief literature: A critical reflection. OMEGA–Journal of Death and Dying, 55, 199–218.
Breen L. J., O’Connor M., (2011). Family and social networks after bereavement: Experiences of support, change and isolation. Journal of Family Therapy, 33, 98–120.
Bronfenbrenner U., (1979). The ecology of human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Callaghan J., Gambo Y., Fellin L., (2015). Hearing the silences: Adult Nigerian women’s accounts of early marriages. Feminism & Psychology, 25, 506–527.
Center for the Advancement of Health. (2004). Report on bereavement and grief research. Death Studies, 28, 491–575.
Cole J., Thomas L. M., (Eds.). (2009). Love in Africa. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Connell R., (2014). Sociology for the whole world. International Sociology, 26, 288–291.
Corden P. A., Hirst M. A., (2013). Economic components of grief. Death Studies, 725–749.
Creevey L., (1996). Islam, women and the role of the State in Senegal. Journal of Religion in Africa, 26(3), 268–307.
Demmer C., (2007). Grief is a luxury: AIDS-related loss in South Africa. Illness, Crisis and Loss, 15, 39–51.
Diop A. B., (1985/2012). La famille Wolof [The Wolof family]. Paris, France: Karthala.
Eisenbruch M., Handelman L., (1990). Cultural consultation for cancer: Astrocytoma in a Cambodian adolescent. Social Science and Medicine, 31, 1295–1299.
Esposito J. L., (2018). ‘The many faces of Islam’. https://www.theiarj.org/religion-resources/primer-on-islam/
Evans R., (2012). Sibling caringscapes: Time-space practices of caring within youth-headed households in Tanzania and Uganda. Geoforum, 43, 824–835.
Evans R., (2014). Parental death as a vital conjuncture? Intergenerational care and responsibility following bereavement in Senegal. Social & Cultural Geography, 15(5), 547–570.
Evans R., (2015). Working with legal pluralism: Widowhood, property inheritance and poverty alleviation in urban Senegal. Gender and Development. 23(1), 77–94.
Evans R., (in press). Widowhood and property inheritance among the Serer in Senegal. In B. M’Baye & B. Muhonja (Eds.), Gender and sexuality in Senegalese societies.
Evans R., Bowlby S., Ribbens McCarthy J., Wouango J., Kébé F., (2018). ‘It’s God’s will’: Consolation and religious meaning-making after a family death in urban Senegal. In Jedan C., Maddrell A., Venbrux E., (Eds.), Consolationscapes in the Face of Loss: Grief and Loss in Space and Time. London, England: Routledge.
Evans R., Ribbens McCarthy J., Bowlby, S., Wouango J., Kébé F., (2016). Responses to death, care and family relations in Urban Senegal (Research Report 1, Human Geography Research Cluster). Reading, England: University of Reading. Retrieved from http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/deathinthefamilyinsenegal/files/2016/02/Evans-et-al-2016-Report.pdf
Evans R., Ribbens McCarthy J., Bowlby S., Wouango J., Kébé F., (2017) Producing emotionally sensed knowledge? Reflexivity and emotions in researching responses to death. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 20(6), 585–598.
Evans R., Ribbens McCarthy J., Kébé F., Bowlby S., Wouango J., (2017). Interpreting ‘grief’ in Senegal: Language, emotions and cross-cultural translation in a francophone African context. Mortality, 22(2), 118–135.
Fall A., Antoine P., Cissé R., Sall M., Ndoye T... Faye A., (2011). The dynamics of poverty in Senegal: Chronic poverty, transitional poverty and vulnerabilities (Policy Brief, LARTES National Studies No. 27). Dakar, Senegal: Research Laboratory on Economic and Social Transformations, Founding Institute of Black Africa, Dakar University Cheikh Anta Diop.
Faye A., (1997). Le thème de la mort dans la littérature Sereer [The theme of death in Sereer literature]. Dakar, Sénégal: Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines du Sénégal.
Finch J., Mason J., (2000). Passing on: Kinship and inheritance in England. London, England: Routledge.
Folta J., Deck E., (1988). The impact of children’s death on Shona mothers and families. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 19, 433–451.
Fox N., (2015). Emotions, affects and the production of social life. British Journal of Sociology, 66, 301–318.
Gergen K., (2011). Relational being: Beyond self and community. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Gifford P., (2016). Religion in contemporary Senegal. Journal of Contemporary Religion, 31, 255–267.
Granek L., (2017). Is grief a disease? The medicalization of grief by the psy-disciplines in the twenty first century. In Thompson N., Cox G. R., (Eds.), Handbook of the sociology of death, grief and bereavement: A guide to theory and practice (pp. 264–277). London, England: Routledge.
Hallam E., Hockey J., (2001). Death, memory and material culture. London, England: Bloomsbury Academic.
Harris D., (2010). Oppression of the bereaved: A critical analysis of grief in Western society. OMEGA—Journal of Death and Dying, 60, 241–253.
Horwitz A. V., Wakefield J. C., (2007). The loss of sadness: How psychiatry transformed normal sorrow into depressive disorder. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Iyenda G., Simon D., (2006). Gender relations, bread winning and family life in Kinshasa. In Murray M., Myers G., (Eds.), Cities in Contemporary Africa (pp. 221–236). Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan.
Jacquemin M., (2010). Urbanization, social change and child protection in West and Central Africa. Dakar, Senegal: UNICEF West and Central Africa Regional Office.
Jakoby N., (2012). Grief as a social emotion: Theoretical perspectives. Death Studies, 36, 679–711.
Jalland P., (2013). A culture of silent grief? The transformation of bereavement care in 20th century England. Bereavement Care, 32, 16–22.
Johnson-Hanks J., (2002). On the limits of life stages in ethnography: Toward a theory of vital conjunctures. American Anthropologist, 104, 865–880.
Jullien F., (2008/2014). On the universal, the uniform, the common and dialogue between cultures (M. Richardson & F. Krzysztof, Trans.). Cambridge, England: Polity Press.
Klass D., (1999). Developing a cross-cultural model of grief. OMEGA—Journal of Death and Dying, 39, 153–178.
Klass D., (2014). Grief, consolation, and religions: A conceptual framework. OMEGA—Journal of Death and Dying, 69, 1–18.
Kleinman A., (2001). Why psychiatry and cultural anthropology still need each other. Psychiatry, 64, 14–16.
Kleinman A., (2007). Psychiatry without context: Turning sadness into disease. The Lancet, 370, 819–820.
Kleinman A., (2012). Culture, bereavement and psychiatry. The Lancet, 379, 608–609.
Kleinman A., Kleinman J., (1991). Suffering and its professional transformation: Towards an ethnography of interpersonal experience. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 15, 275–301.
Lofland L. H., (1985). The social shaping of grief. Symbolic Interaction, 8, 171–190.
Lukes S., (2008). Moral relativism. London, England: Profile Books.
Marris P., (1958/2014). Widows and their families. Abingdon, England: Routledge.
Mauthner N., Doucet A., (2008). What can be known and how? Narrated subjects. Qualitative Research, 8, 399–409.
Ministère de l'Economie, des Finances et du Plan, ANSD, DGPSSN, UNICEF Sénégal et EMAP. (2014). Actualisation de l'étude sur la pauvreté et les disparités chez les enfants au Sénégal [Updated study of poverty and disparities among children in Senegal]. Dakar, Sénégal: Ministère de l'Economie, des Finances et du Plan, ANSD, DGPSSN, UNICEF Sénégal et EMAP.
Miller D., Parrott F., (2009). Loss and material culture in South London. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 15, 502–519.
Nadeau J. W., (1990). Families making sense of death. London, England: Sage.
Ndiaye L., (2009). Parenté et mort chez les Wolof: Traditions et modernité au Sénégal [Kinship and death among the Wolof: Traditions and modernity in Senegal]. Paris, France: L'Harmattan.
Ndiaye L., (2012). Mort et thérapie en Afrique. Enjeux, représentations et symbols [Death and therapy in Africa. Issues, representations and symbols]. Paris, France: L'Harmattan.
Neimeyer R., (Ed.). (2001). Meaning reconstruction and the experience of loss. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Neimeyer R., Klass D., Dennis M. R., (2014). A social constructionist account of grief: Loss and the narration of meaning. Death Studies, 38, 485–498.
Nel P. J., (2008). Morality and religion in African thought. Acta Theologica, 28, 33–47.
Njue J. M., Rombo D., Lutomia A. N., Smart L. S., Mwaniki L. M., Sore I. L., (2015). Death, grief and culture in Kenya: Experiential strengths-based research. In Cacciatore J., DeFrain J., (Eds.), The world of bereavement: Cultural perspectives on death in families (pp. 3–24). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Nordanger D., (2007). Discourses of loss and bereavement in Tigray, Ethiopia. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 32(2), 173–194.
Nwoye A., (2005). Memory healing processes and community intervention in grief work in Africa. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy, 26, 147–154.
Oheneba-Sakyi Y., Takyi B., (2006). Introduction to the study of African families: A framework for analysis. In Oheneba-Sakyi Y., Takyi B., (Eds.), African families at the turn of the 21st century (pp. 1–23). Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt.
Palgi P., Abramovitch H., (1984). Death: A cross-cultural perspective. Annual Review of Anthropology, 13, 385–417.
Punch S., (2016). Cross-world and cross-disciplinary dialogue: A more integrated, global approach to childhood studies. Global Studies of Childhood, 6, 352–364.
Reddy W. M., (2001). The navigation of feeling: A framework for the history of emotions. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Ribbens McCarthy J., (2006). Young people’s experiences of loss and bereavement: Towards an interdisciplinary approach. Buckingham, England: Open University Press.
Ribbens McCarthy J., (2012a) Caring after death: issues of embodiment and relationality. In C. Rogers, S. Weller, (Eds.), Critical approaches to care: Understanding caring relations, identities and cultures (pp. 183–194). London, England: Routledge.
Ribbens McCarthy J., (2012b). The powerful relational language of ‘family’: Togetherness, belonging and personhood. Sociological Review, 60(1), 68–90.
Ribbens McCarthy J., Doolittle M., Day Sclater S., (2012). Understanding family meanings: A reflective text. Bristol, England: Policy Press.
Ribbens McCarthy J., Edwards R., (2011). Key concepts in family studies. London, England: Sage.
Ribbens McCarthy J., Gillies V., (2018). Troubling children's families: Who’s troubled and why? Approaches to inter-cultural dialogue. Sociological Research Online, 23(1), 219–244.
Ribbens McCarthy J., Prokhovnik R., (2014). Embodied relationality and caring after death. Body & Society, 20(2), 18–43.
Rosenblatt P. C., (2001). A social constructionist perspective on cultural differences in grief. In Stroebe M. S., Hansson R. O., Stroebe W., Schut H., (Eds.), Handbook of bereavement research: Consequences, coping, and care (pp. 285–300). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Rosenblatt P. C., (2007). Recovery following bereavement: Metaphor, phenomenology and culture. Death Studies, 32, 6–16.
Rosenblatt P. C., (2008). Grief across cultures: A review and research agenda. In Stroebe M. S., Hansson R. O., Schut H., Stroebe W., (Eds.), Handbook of bereavement research and practice: Advances in theory and intervention (pp. 207–222). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Rosenblatt P. C., (2015). Grief in small scale societies. In Parkes C. M., Laungani P., Young W., (Eds.), Death and bereavement across cultures (2nd ed., pp. 23–41). Hove, England: Routledge.
Squire C., (2008). Experience centred and culturally-oriented approaches to narrative. In Andrews M., Squire C., Tamboukou M., (Eds.), Doing narrative research (pp. 47–72). London, England: Sage.
Sogolo G. S., (2003). The concept of cause in African thought. In Coetzee P. H., Roux A. P. J., (Eds.), The African philosophy reader (2nd ed., pp. 192–199). New York, NY: Routledge.
Sow F., (2003). Fundamentalisms, globalisation and women’s human rights in Senegal. Gender and Development, 11, 69–76.
Stroebe M., (2010). Bereavement in a family context: Coping with the loss of a loved one. Family Science, 1, 144–151.
Thomas L. V., (1968/2013). Cinq essais sur la mort Africaine [Five essays on African death]. Paris, France: Editions Karthala.
Thompson, N., Allan, J., Carverhill, P. A., Cox, G. R., Davies, B., Doka, K., Granek, L., Harris, D., Ho, A., Klass, D., Small, N., Wittkowski, J. (2016). The case for a sociology of dying, death and bereavement. Death Studies, 40, 172–181.
Tronto J., (1993). Moral boundaries. A political argument for an ethic of care. London, England: Routledge.
Valentine C., (2006). Academic constructions of bereavement. Mortality, 11, 57–78.
Valentine C., (2008). Bereavement narratives: Continuing bonds in the twenty-first century. Abingdon, England: Routledge.
Villalón L. A., (1999). Generational changes, political stagnation and the evolving dynamics of religion and politics in Senegal. Africa Today, 46, 129–147.
Walter T., (2006). What is complicated grief? A social constructionist perspective. OMEGA—Journal of Death and Dying, 52, 71–79.
Walter T., (2017). What death means now. Bristol, England: Policy Press.
Wambach J. A., (1986). The grief process as a social construct. OMEGA—Journal of Death and Dying, 16, 201–211.
Wikan U., (1988). Bereavement and loss in two Muslim communities: Egypt and Bali compared. Social Science & Medicine, 27, 451–460.
Woodthorpe K., Rumble H., Valentine C., (2013). Putting 'the grave' into social policy: State support for funerals in contemporary UK society. Journal of Social Policy, 42, 605–622.
