Mapping death, migration, and material culture: A case study of Igbo Nigerians

This project focuses on memorialising practices of the Igbos, one of the largest ethnic groups in Nigeria. In particular, it explores the emergence of 'the fetish object' within such practices both in Nigeria and in the diaspora. The research will explore the material culture of memorialisation and the role of the souvenir. This includes mass-produced, often cheaply made, commodities - mugs, bottle openers, plastic food containers - which are distributed to attendees at funerals and wakes as tokens of remembrance. These objects remain in the home for decades but, unlike the memorial items traditionally studied by cultural geographers and other scholars (e.g. jewellery, photographs), they do not occupy a privileged place in the household, nor are they handled with special care. They are rather used daily without second thought. This project will seek to understand not only the practical function of these objects within the domestic home but also their role within the cultural practices and performances which surround the death event. Doing so will require engaging directly with emotional and sensory experiences within the domestic home, an inherently gendered space. The research will therefore also explore the gendered differences between how these interconnected deathscapes and their material supports are accessed and interpreted.

A central point of analysis within this research will be understanding how, as migration is changing, Igbos are continuing the cultural tradition of keeping the dead within the home, a tradition which was historically fulfilled through the burial of family within the homestead. It will focus on how souvenirs, which travel bidirectionally between Nigeria and the diaspora, help negotiate these changes. Older Igbo generations living in Nigeria, and many of the first-generation immigrants who have been settled in the diaspora for several decades, grew up during the Nigerian civil war of the 1960s. Such intense periods of violence and displacement inevitably influence cultural attitudes towards home, death and territory, and exploring how this has shaped contemporary Igbo culture will therefore also offer a unique perspective on death practices in the diaspora.

Contributing to a research field that has largely focussed on Global North contexts, this project will identify how emotional and spiritual meanings are embodied, imbued in, and interpreted through objects within cultural systems that have thus far been excluded. The project will focus on taking a more inclusive research methodology, by centring accessibility in both the research process and its outcomes. Through storytelling and oral histories, the project will approach the continuing traditions and emerging norms around burial and material culture in a way that makes it adaptable by and accountable to the research 'subjects'.