Love, a universal yet contextual emotion, is increasingly recognized as crucial for understanding development and sustainability. While often overlooked in scholarly discourse, its affective dimensions influence social vulnerability and interactions. This study investigates love's role in sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on how understandings of love and culture impact gender relations, resource management, and food security. The researchers aim to move beyond simplistic views of love and provide a multifaceted analysis incorporating various perspectives from biology, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, and sociology. The study highlights that love, alongside other emotions, is expressed through social and cultural practices and is deeply shaped by context, culture, history, social trends, and power dynamics. Feminist geography emphasizes the need to scrutinize love and affection in intimate relationships to unpack power imbalances, particularly in relation to gender and resource control. The personal experience of love is connected to the broader social and political realms, recognizing that “the personal is political” and acknowledging love as a social and collective concern, impacting sustainable development on both individual and collective scales.

The study conducted a systematic literature review using Web of Science and Google Scholar, initially identifying 80 articles related to 'love'. After coding the introduction and conclusion of each article based on six clusters (article type, location, power, negotiation processes, methodology, and other), 45 highly relevant articles were selected. These articles were analyzed thematically across twelve categories to identify recurring themes and perspectives on love. The authors examined how love is defined and studied across disciplines, revealing a diversity of perspectives. The literature revealed that love is not a single, universal concept, but instead a complex, context-specific phenomenon. Four core, overlapping themes emerged: contextual love, influenced by culture, space and time; romantic and compassionate love; transactional love (intertwining love and material provision); and post-humanist perspectives focusing on harmony with nature. The review also considers the interplay of love, power, inequality and gender relations.

The research employed a systematic literature review methodology. The researchers began with a keyword search in Web of Science, using four categories of keywords: core concepts (e.g., 'love', 'love power'), definitions of love (e.g., 'emotion', 'intimacy'), relations of power (e.g., 'gender', 'marriage'), and thematic coverage (e.g., 'Africa', 'agriculture'). This initial search yielded 80 texts. The researchers then conducted a second round of coding, focusing on the introduction and conclusion of each of the 80 texts. They used a coding scheme with six main clusters and twelve specific categories (Table 2) to assess the relevance of each article concerning their research questions. This resulted in the selection of 45 highly relevant articles. The selected articles' introductions and conclusions were then coded and analyzed systematically, creating a literature tracking table to track information across the thematic categories. The data were organized in Excel, visually represented using color-coding to identify patterns and overlaps across themes.

The literature review revealed four core types of love: 1) Contextual love: Love is context-specific and varies across cultures, space, and time. Cultural values influence the expression and desirability of love, as illustrated by contrasting examples from the US and China. 2) Romantic, compassionate, and confluent love: Romantic love is often viewed as heterosexual, monogamous, and permanent, perpetuating gender stereotypes. However, queer literature challenges these norms, highlighting the limitations of traditional romantic narratives. Compassionate love focuses on care and responsibility for others, which may be more dominant in collectivist cultures compared to the individualistic emphasis on passionate romantic love. Confluent love emphasizes equality, emotional involvement, and commitment. 3) Transactional love: This type explores the interconnectedness of love and financial support, a relationship more explicit in sub-Saharan contexts where poverty is prevalent. This includes examples of bride-wealth with affective dimensions, resource sharing within relationships, and various power dynamics as expressed through control and access to resources. 4) Post-humanist perspectives and 'harmony love': This perspective extends love beyond human interactions, encompassing love for nature and the natural world. It argues that fostering a connection with nature is vital for sustainable development. The study also examined the interplay of love, power, and inequality within households. Studies from Ghana and Zimbabwe show how gendered societal norms impact access to resources and power dynamics within marital relationships. The review also explores the role of emotions in relationships, noting differences in emotional expression between genders and across cultural contexts. The expression of emotions such as affection, care, tenderness, or commitment as well as pain, jealousy and irrationality is considered to be central to romantic or social relationships, and vary historically and cross culturally. Finally, the study addresses the role of love in gendered labour and the challenges women face in farming communities due to insecure land rights and unequal power dynamics.

This review highlights the complexity and context-specificity of love, challenging simplistic and universalizing approaches. It shows how love is intertwined with power, gender, and sustainability, especially within sub-Saharan African contexts. The study emphasizes the need to consider the material and emotional aspects of relationships, revealing how these aspects are interwoven. The findings expose the limitations of viewing love as solely a private matter, demonstrating its importance for social justice, resource management, and sustainable development. The various types of love identified (contextual, romantic/compassionate, transactional, and post-humanist) provide a framework for future research exploring the diversity of human relationships. The study also highlights the underrepresentation of sub-Saharan African perspectives and queer experiences in the existing scholarship on love, advocating for future research in those areas.

This review comprehensively examines the scholarship on love, highlighting its diverse meanings and implications. The study emphasizes the context-specific nature of love and its interplay with power, gender, and sustainability. Four main types of love are identified and analyzed, which shows that love is not a universally understood concept. Future research should focus on cross-cultural studies, in-depth case studies, and exploring queer perspectives to further enrich our understanding of this complex human experience. In particular, the study emphasizes the importance of integrating diverse perspectives from the sub-Saharan African context into the broader theoretical understanding of love.

The study acknowledges limitations related to the systematic review's reliance on available literature. The focus on English-language publications might have excluded relevant research in other languages. While the review aimed for a comprehensive overview, the sheer diversity of perspectives on love might have resulted in some nuances being overlooked. The review's focus is primarily theoretical, and more empirical research is needed to validate and extend the findings.