Time-space practices of care after a family death in urban Senegal

Abstract

This paper contributes to studies of care practices and care ethics beyond the Minority world by analysing informal caringscapes after a family death in urban Senegal. Based on the findings of a qualitative study in the cities of Dakar and Kaolack, we explore exchanges of care by the living for the living in the period immediately following the death, and changes in these care practices over the longer term. We focus on mobilities and changing care roles in family lives over time. We demonstrate the central significance of family commitments and concern for the wellbeing of the 'family' in caring exchanges. We suggest that a deeply relational understanding of personhood as bound up with family and community underlies many current caring practices in urban Senegal and challenges current conceptualisations of care interdependencies.

Introduction: continuity, change, and contestation in urban deathscapes

“…Writers like Ash Amin, Nigel Thrift (Amin & Thrift, 2002), Doreen Massey (1994Massey ( , 2005 and Edward Soja (1996) led this turn, which has continued to develop since (Jonas, McCann & Thomas, 2015). However, the study of death, dying, and remembrance has for a large part been side-lined in the field of urban geography, although important work has drawn attention to this blind spot for some time now, usually based in interdisciplinary studies of urban geography, planning, cultural geography, and death studies (Bowlby et al, 2021;Jedan, Maddrell & Venbrux, 2018;Maddrell, 2016;Maddrell & Sidaway, 2010).…”