Culture and Colonial Medicine: Smallpox in Abeokuta, Western Nigeria
Posted: 23 Mar 2015
Date Written: 2015
Abstract
This paper revisits the social history of smallpox in Africa against the background that its study has mainly been subsumed under (and against) the broad World Health Organization account of the eradication of the disease. By tracing local conceptions and discourses of smallpox, and the social and political implications of the disease in Abeokuta (Western Nigeria), I provide an account of medical pluralism, which accounts for the continuance of smallpox deities and rituals despite its medical eradication since the 1970s. The article thereby adds to scholarly views on the need for a reconsideration of African healing systems; one, which recognizes colonial medicine, is a marginal part of the whole---rather than a defining tangent of Africa's medical experience.
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation