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

Oduntan, Oluwatoyin Babatunde, Culture and Colonial Medicine: Smallpox in Abeokuta, Western Nigeria (2015). ASA 2015 Annual Meeting Paper, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2583019

Oluwatoyin Babatunde Oduntan (Contact Author)

Towson University ( email )

8000 York Road, ST 100A
Towson, MD 21204
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Abstract Views
180
PlumX Metrics