Mourir en contexte urbain camerounais : une analyse des inégalités et des rapports sociaux inhérents à la mort à Douala au Cameroun

Abstract

Africa is urbanizing faster than any other continent. This urbanization is more a demographic than an industrial phenomenon, as was the case in Europe. It is accompanied by an increasingly important metropolisation. In Cameroon, metropolisation, understood as the process of the concentration of command functions (political, economic, and cultural) in a small number of cities, mainly affects the cities of Yaoundé (political capital) and Douala (economic capital), with notable consequences. This study aims to analyze death in an urban context. It tackles, from a sociological perspective (sociology of funerals and urban studies), the question of urban vulnerabilities, their production and their reproduction. Based on the issue of death in an urban Cameroonian context, it tries to show how the loss of a loved one and the ensuing funeral can reveal the forms of inequality that structure the lives of certain populations in the Cameroonian urban field, specifically in the city of Douala. The field data that was mobilized comes from a collection carried out expressly for the drafting of this article.

Keywords

• death
• urban context
• inequality
• social relatio
• Douala
• Cameroon