Gendered mourning: A perspective of Akan death culture in Ghana

Abstract

Death is the commonest, incomprehensible, and inescapable reality confronting humanity in all nations and cultures. However, cultures vary in their conceptions of death, grieving and mourning rituals. Among the Akan of Ghana, mourning and funeral obsequies are essential cultural and spiritual practices. In this article, we draw insights from our reflective lived experiences and critical literature review to explore mourning and death rituals among the Akan as a stratified cultural system that reflects and reproduces broader gender patterns of masculinity and femininity in Ghana. We discuss the concept and cultural significance of mourning and bereavement practices, and further examine how socio-cultural notions of gender shape mourning and death rituals in Ghana. We argue that, as in many social and economic spaces in Ghana, funeral obsequies and bereavement practices represent sites for enacting and reproducing masculinity and femininity. The deleterious health and psychological consequences for men and women are further discussed.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 Asamando is the Akan equivalent of the afterlife. Akans believe that upon death, the spirit of the deceased journeys to the asamando, the abode of the spirits of the dead. Here, it takes up residence with other deceased members of the matrilineage, assuming a life very similar to the life they lived on earth. It is believed that the soul will reside here until they are reincarnated into the same matrilineage in their next life.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.