Death and Dying in the History of Africa Since 1800

Abstract

In this Introduction to the Special Issue on Death in African History we explore issues raised by the existing literature and suggest ways forward for future research. Death has long been a central concern of social anthropological writing on African societies, and of the extensive literature on African belief systems. Until recently, however, little attention has been paid to the history of death practices in Africa in relation to demographic change, urbanization, the interventions of the colonial and postcolonial state and the availability of new technologies. We explore the ways in which these forces have contributed to re-inventions of practices and beliefs surrounding death which are both self-evidently ‘modern’ and yet also rooted in a much longer history.

Vital instability: ontological insecurity and African urbanisms

“…Attributes given to the dead body are critical in defining the limits and contours of personhood. The ontological power of the dead body (Lee and Vaughan 2008) is manifest in conceptions that provide the corpse with power to affect the living. Death rituals to collect the soul of the deceased are very common in both rural and urban South Africa.…”

The Moral Economy of Violence in the US Inner City

“…Perhaps, then, Fassin's questioning of the syntax here helps us push Thompson's concept toward a more subtle interpretation of class in the twenty-first century as a complex political economy of subject formation. (For additional interesting prior uses of the phrase "moral economy of violence" in historical studies not already cited in our article, see Amussen [1994]; Lee and Vaughan [2008].) Above all, by retaining the term "moral" in our conception of political economy, we also want to highlight the centrality of kinship and gender in our analysis (implied in the root meaning of "economy" [oikonomia, law/custom of the household] in its contrast to politics).…”

Introduction: Themes in the Study of Death and Loss in Africa

“…Recent historical and social anthropological research has challenged the structural functionalist account, dominant in the scholarship since the early decades of the 20 th century, of the meaning and management of death in African societies (Lee and Vaughan 2008). For example, funerals, far from being static social institutions, are now understood to be spaces of contestation, where the memory of the deceased as well as larger notions of communal identity and belonging are debated and expressed (Durham and Klaits 2002;Jindra and Noret 2011).…”

“…This 'relative neglect' may be due to the lingering perception (whose antecedents can be traced to colonial anthropology) that Africans and African social institutions are fundamentally 'good' at managing death (Lee and Vaughan 2008). This may also reflect, as Lynn Thomas and Jennifer Cole note in the introduction to their recent volume on love in Africa, a general scholarly reluctance (influenced by Western preoccupations with Africans as primarily 'social' beings) to consider Africans' capacity for individuated sentiment (Cole and Thomas 2009; see also Vaughan 2009).…”

“…Rather than offering a comprehensive review of the vast literature on this subject (see Lee and Vaughan 2008), this Introduction instead briefly explores a few important themes weaving through the individual articles in this Special Issue.…”