Meanings and implications of love: review of the scholarship of love with a sub-Saharan focus

The paper positions love as universal yet contextual, arguing that emotions such as love, passion, fear and hope are fundamental to understanding development, social vulnerability, and sustainability. It treats love as an entry point to unpack power, gender and identity within intimate contracts (e.g., marriage), where love operates as a dynamic power relation with wider social implications. The authors adopt perspectives from feminist geography and black feminist love-politics to bridge the personal and the political, emphasizing that love should be analyzed not only as an individual experience but also as a collective concern central to justice. The research questions are: (1) How is love defined and studied in the scholarship of love research? and (2) What does love mean across sub-Saharan African cultures? The focus is on how love, affection and related emotions influence human interactions—particularly in intimate relations—and how that, in turn, affects sustainable development in sub-Saharan African agricultural settings. The introduction also highlights gaps, including colonial legacies in depictions of African intimacy, and frames sustainability broadly across human-environmental, intergenerational, and intersectional dynamics.

The surveyed literature spans humanities and behavioral sciences, with fewer studies in sociology and other social sciences. The overarching consensus is that love is not a single universal concept but a diverse, context-specific social phenomenon. The review identifies four overlapping thematic types of speaking about love: (1) contextual love shaped by culture, space and time; (2) romantic, compassionate, and confluent love; (3) transactional love connecting emotion and material provision; and (4) post-humanist and harmony love extending love beyond human-to-human relations. The literature also treats love in relation to power, emotion, and gender, including how cultural norms influence gendered experiences of love, resource management, and the division of labor. Despite a cross-cultural scope, explicit studies of love in African settings are relatively few, and queer perspectives on love are often omitted, indicating gaps for future research.

Systematic literature review focused on English-language texts (book chapters, conference proceedings, peer-reviewed journal and review articles) up to July 2021. Primary database: Web of Science; cross-checked with Google Scholar. Search strategy used a structured set of keywords covering core concepts of love, definitions (emotion, intimacy, affection, romance, love triangle), relations of power (gender, masculinity/femininity, marital power), and thematic coverage (Africa, agriculture, farming, marriage, environment, labor, development, anthropology, culture). Initial corpus: 80 texts. A second round involved coding introductions and conclusions to assess relevance (high, medium, low) across six clusters and twelve categories (e.g., article type, contextual relevance of love, other emotions, location/actors, power, negotiation processes, methodology). Forty-five texts were classified as highly relevant. Data extraction was conducted into an Excel literature tracking table with 1360 cells populated (some n/a), followed by synopses per article and category, systematic color-coding, and horizontal arrangement of thematic information for visual comparison and preliminary visualization. The review specifically aims to bring sub-Saharan scholarship into conversation with broader love research, with particular attention to sustainability in agricultural contexts.

• Love is diverse and context-specific rather than a single universal construct, echoing long-standing research since the 1960s.
• Four core types of love discourse were identified:
  1. Contextual love: culturally, spatially, and temporally contingent; culture sets moral frames for feelings and actions.
  2. Romantic, compassionate, and confluent love: romantic love often tied to heteronormative, monogamous ideals and gendered expectations; confluent love emphasizes equality, mutuality, and emotional fulfillment without necessarily seeking permanence; companionate/altruistic love prominent in collectivist contexts (e.g., Ghanaian Christians’ agape).
  3. Transactional love: explicit interlinkages of love with provision and material support, particularly salient in sub-Saharan Africa, yet not inherently negative; emotional intimacy and material exchange can co-exist (e.g., bridewealth’s affective dimensions; Tanzanian youth and Ghanaian sex workers’ relationships).
  4. Post-humanist and ‘harmony love’: extending love to non-human beings and nature; posits love as foundational to awareness and interconnectedness and as a potential driver of holistic sustainable development.
• Love, power, and inequality: Gendered access to land and resources is embedded in social norms (e.g., in Ghana only ~10% of agricultural parcels owned by individual female farmers). Love norms (e.g., husbands should ‘love, lead and provide’) reflect and reproduce power imbalances; exploitation can occur within romantic relationships (e.g., unpaid domestic labor, sexual coercion), but agency and negotiation are present and can challenge inequalities.
• Love-related emotions are central to relationship dynamics, vary cross-culturally and by gender, and map onto love types (e.g., romantic love linked to jealousy and pain; confluent love linked to equality and mutuality). In sub-Saharan settings, passion/lust/infatuation may be associated with youth/irresponsibility, while ‘true’ or companionate love emphasizes trust, respect, and responsibility.
• Gendered love and labor: Social norms shape divisions of unpaid domestic and productive labor; increased male practical support (Tanzania/Zimbabwe) was associated with happier, more supportive marriages, albeit stigmatized by communities.
• Scope figures: 80 texts reviewed; 45 highly relevant analyzed in depth; only 20 explicitly investigated love in African settings, revealing underrepresentation of African perspectives.

The findings address the research questions by demonstrating that love is both universal and profoundly shaped by cultural, spatial, and temporal contexts, which influence how love is defined, expressed, and experienced. This contextual framing clarifies how love functions within intimate contracts as a medium of power, negotiation, and identity, directly affecting resource use, labor divisions, and gender relations in sub-Saharan agricultural settings. The identified love types provide an analytical lens to track how emotions (e.g., trust, jealousy, compassion) align with relationship forms (romantic, companionate, confluent, transactional) and how these are embedded in social norms that reproduce or challenge inequalities. The review links love to sustainability: companionate and post-humanist notions of love can underpin care, reciprocity, and stewardship toward people and nature, potentially driving more equitable resource distribution, heightened food security/sovereignty, and environmental protection. By revealing the interplay between love, power, and gendered labor, the study advances understanding of how affective relations shape development outcomes and sustainability trajectories in sub-Saharan contexts.

The review shows that love, while universally significant, is contextually constructed and remains under-examined across cultures. Across 80 texts (45 deeply analyzed), four core love types were identified: (1) contextual love; (2) romantic, compassionate, and confluent love identifiable also across sub-Saharan cultures; (3) transactional love, notably visible in sub-Saharan African relationships and compatible with genuine affection; and (4) post-humanist/harmony love extending beyond human-human relations with potential to drive holistic sustainability. Examining love alongside power, emotions, and gender—especially in relation to labor and land—illuminates how spouses negotiate power and how emotions structure social relations. The review indicates that love can influence resource use and division, gender equality, and sustainability across human-environmental, intersectional, and intergenerational dimensions. African conceptualizations are underrepresented (only 20 of 80 articles explicitly African), and queer perspectives are largely omitted, highlighting critical gaps. Future research should integrate studies of polygyny and polyamory, and expand cross-cultural ethnographies and discursive analyses to deepen theory and support empowerment of sub-Saharan small-scale farmers.

• Language and database scope: Search restricted to English-language sources and primarily Web of Science (cross-checked with Google Scholar), potentially excluding relevant non-English and regionally indexed literature.
• Temporal cutoff: Publications included up to July 2021; newer studies may alter patterns and conclusions.
• Selection and coding: Of 80 texts identified, 45 were classified as highly relevant; coding judgments and synthesis may reflect reviewer interpretations despite systematic procedures.
• Regional representation: Only 20 of 80 articles explicitly investigated love in African settings, indicating underrepresentation of African perspectives.
• Thematic gaps: Queer perspectives on love were overwhelmingly omitted or lightly treated in the surveyed literature, and some sub-topics (e.g., polygyny vs. polyamory) are not well integrated.
• Review nature: As a literature review, no original empirical data were generated or analyzed; findings depend on the quality and coverage of existing studies.