Everyday understandings of family deaths in urban Senegal, making cautious comparisons with the UK.

What is it about?

The paper presents the findings from in-depth interviews with people living in Senegal who have experienced the death of an adult family member, interviewing two people from different generations in each family. The interviews set out to explore both the practical and emotional significance of the deaths. We also held focus groups and interviewed local, religious and government leaders. In this article we try to understand how people made sense of the deaths in the circumstances of their lives. We particularly discuss death as a communal experience, in relation to families, communities and religion (primarily Sufi Islam), as well as the ways in which emotions are bound up with the material consequences of the deaths. Throughout the article we consider how this compares with experiences of 'bereavement' in the UK and other countries. In conclusion we also summarise some overall comparisons between Senegalese and UK responses to death, considering how the points of divergence between them offer different strengths and limitations in terms of how people dealt with the deaths.

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Why is it important?

This is the first study to explore both emotional and practical consequences of family deaths in a contemporary West African context. It is crucially important in enabling us to listen to people largely on their own terms, giving the opportunity to try to understand how differently death may be experienced in different parts of the world. We then also turn the spotlight on the UK to ask what light these interviews shed on the accepted ways of doing things here, and the ways in which this challenges dominant taken-for-granted assumptions in the bereavement literature.

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