Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book addresses consolation as a concept, its dialogic and dialectical relationship to grief, including the links between the Consolationscapesin the Face of Loss and Deathscapes volumes. It examines sites and practices of consolation in the European context. The book enriches their understanding of consolation conceptually through attention to case-studies drawn from the Global South. It focuses on bereavement and draws on previous scholarship in emotional-affective geographies of loss and remembrance to explore the dynamic and dialectical relationship between grief and consolation. The book discusses case studies from England and Scotland and Denmark. It also focuses on Africa, more precisely what UN publications still refer to as 'Sub-Saharan Africa', that is Zimbabwe, Uganda and Senegal. The book explores death rituals in Acholi in northern Uganda, a region similarly torn by civil war.