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This paper reflects on the methodological complexities of producing emotionally-sensed knowledge about responses to family deaths in urban Senegal. Through engaging in 'uncomfortable reflexivity', we critically explore the multiple positionings of the research team comprised of UK, Senegalese and Burkinabé researchers and those of participants in Senegal and interrogate our own cultural assumptions. We explore the emotional labour of the research process from an ethic of care perspective and reflect on how our multiple positionings and emotions influence the production and interpretation of the data, particularly exemplified through our differing responses to diverse meanings of 'family' and religious refrains. We show how our approach of 'uncomfortable reflexivity' helps to reveal the work of emotions in research, thereby producing 'emotionally sensed knowledge' about responses to death and contributing to the cross-cultural study of emotions.

Keywords: Feminist ethic of care; informal care; family relations; time-space practices; death and bereavement; ubuntu; Senegal west africa; ética feminista del cuidado; cuidado informal; relaciones familiares; prácticas espacio-temporales; muerte y duelo; Senegal; África Occidental; Éthique féministe du care; care informel; relations familiales; pratiques spatiotemporelles; mort et deuil; Sénégal Afrique occidentale EN Feminist ethic of care informal care family relations time-space practices death and bereavement ubuntu Senegal west africa ES ética feminista del cuidado cuidado informal relaciones familiares prácticas espacio-temporales muerte y duelo Senegal África Occidental FR Éthique féministe du care care informel relations familiales pratiques spatiotemporelles mort et deuil Sénégal Afrique occidentale 1174 1192 19 10/12/22 20221001 NES 221001 Introduction After her father's death, Diami (then aged 14) moved from Kaolack to Dakar to earn money to help her mother and siblings. Here, our discussion of caringscapes focuses on the role of time-space relationships in care practices and the importance of interactions between care practices and the social and physical infrastructures of care. While we do not set out to provide anything so ambitious as a "geohistory" of care practices in Senegal, we describe local geographies of care practices and explore how these are entangled with particular conceptions of how and by whom care should be done. Gendered inequalities in family care practices in South Africa have prompted some to note that Ubuntu's encouragement of communal care responsibilities through recognition of human interdependencies still supports a patriarchal division of care work (Gouws & Van Zyl, [15]). [Extracted from the article]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on the profound complexities of translating and interpreting ‘grief’, and emotions and responses to death more broadly, in multilingual, cross-cultural contexts. Drawing on qualitative research conducted in urban Senegal, West Africa, we discuss the exchange of meanings surrounding grief and death through language, including the process of translation, in its broadest sense, between multiple languages (Wolof, French, English). Our experiences demonstrate the crucial importance of involving interpreters and field researchers throughout the research process, to gain fundamental insight into the cultural nuances of indigenous languages and how these are translated and potentially re-framed in the process. We reflect on our iterative process of discussing emerging interpretations with participants in follow-up workshops and with our interpreter. This approach helped shed light on language use surrounding ‘grief’ and how this is bound up with wider socio-cultural norms which make particular emotions surrounding death and experiences/meanings of death and bereavement possible and ‘speak-able’. Our research calls for greater recognition in death and bereavement studies of the cultural specificity of conceptual frameworks developed in minority European socio-linguistic contexts and demonstrates the need for greater engagement with theoretical, empirical and methodological insights gained in diverse cultural contexts in the Majority world. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]