Interpreting family struggles in West Africa across Majority-Minority world boundaries: tensions and possibilities

Abstract

The 'family' is associated with powerful, often emotive discourses in both the Majority and Minority worlds. However, family geographies to date have been largely focused on research with children and families in the Minority world, reflecting the wider dominance of geographical knowledge and social science theories developed in affluent, Anglophone contexts. In this intervention, I reflect on the tensions in attempting to theorise family meanings, practices and struggles in West Africa without imposing Minority world framings and perspectives. In my research in urban Senegal, the team's approach of 'uncomfortable reflexivity' enabled us to have frank conversations about our own experiences of 'family' and the death of a significant person, about our differing emotional responses to participants' experiences and about the nuances of the language used. My collaborative research with Ghanaian academics highlights the importance of time and space to develop shared qualitative understandings of everyday family struggles for publication in international journals. Given global inequalities in social science knowledge production, an ethic of care is needed that seeks to collaborate reflexively with others across disciplinary, linguistic and Majority-Minority world boundaries. This endeavour will hopefully generate more nuanced insights into the plurality and diversity of everyday family lives globally, while recognising the commonalities we share, situating knowledge in place and approaching the 'global' from the Majority world.

The (Cross-Cultural) Problem of Categories: Who is ‘Child’, What is ‘Family’?

“…Such an approach risks failing to re-think the Minority world assumptions on which childhood studies have been based (Balagolapan, 2019). Indeed, given global inequalities in social science knowledge production, Evans (2019) argues for an ethic of care that seeks reflexive collaboration across Majority-Minority world boundaries. Additionally, however, we suggest here the need to move beyond categorical thinking itself, as a particular and fundamental feature of Western European thought, which may be hard to grasp within the underpinning historical framework of European and Anglophone language.…”

Unpacking ‘family troubles’, care and relationality across time and space

“…We also seek to respond to broader calls to challenge binary characterisations Twum-Danso Imoh, Bourdillon, and Meichsner 2019) and 'trouble' disciplinary boundaries in order to advance interdisciplinary understandings of contemporary family lives, while acknowledging unequal power geometries of knowledge production in a postcolonial, globalised world (Comaroff and Comaroff 2012;Connell 2006;Philipps 2018). In particular, Evans (2019) has highlighted the need to trouble Majority-Minority world binaries about 'family struggles' and recognise commonalities, while carefully situating the process of knowledge production and paying close attention to differing meanings of 'family'. Further, Ribbens McCarthy and Gillies (2018) call for the development of inter-cultural dialogue about the boundary between 'normal' family troubles, and troubles that are troublingpotentially 'harmful', particularly to childrenin ways that might be seen to require intervention.…”

“…Recent interdisciplinary work among sociologists and geographers, including a forthcoming special issue of Gender, Place & Culture on the theme of 'Everyday geographies of family: feminist approaches and interdisciplinary conversations', is however helping to redress this balance (Edwards 2019;Evans 2019;Morgan 2019;Tarrant and Hall 2019). This interdisciplinary dialogue is also demonstrated in the range of disciplinary backgrounds of contributors to this special section and the wide range of papers presented at the interdisciplinary Symposium on 'Family Troubles: Care and Change in Diverse Contexts' we convened in Reading in 2015.…”