Crossroads: leprosy, Igbo cosmology and cultural worldviews

This research examines the continuity and changes in Igbo thoughts on leprosy by exploring Igbo cosmology and its relationship with Christian and colonial ideas about the disease. The perception of leprosy in precolonial Igboland reveals a shocking similarity with the later Judeo-Christian identity...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Africa (London. 1928) 2024-11, Vol.94 (4), p.556-574
Main Author: Odinaka Kingsley Eze
Format: Article
Language:eng ; fre ; ger
Subjects:
Christianity
Christians
Colonialism
Cosmology
Deities
Disease
Eschatology
Historians
Identity
Ideology
Leprosy
Medicine
Missionaries
Perceptions
Religion
Religious conversion
Religious missions
Sociocultural factors
Stigma
Worldview
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Summary:This research examines the continuity and changes in Igbo thoughts on leprosy by exploring Igbo cosmology and its relationship with Christian and colonial ideas about the disease. The perception of leprosy in precolonial Igboland reveals a shocking similarity with the later Judeo-Christian identity and the perception of leprosy that dominated the area during colonialism. It argues that colonial and Christian missionary ideas did not radically transform the perceptions of leprosy in south-eastern Nigeria. Instead, what happened was merely an adaptation and continuity of prevailing thoughts about the disease. Using oral evidence, archival materials and existing anthropological works on Igbo worldviews and cosmology, this research shows the changes in the colonial socio-cultural knowledge of leprosy. After careful analysis, it concludes that, while colonial medicine and the missionaries’ idea of leprosy healed leprosy sufferers and transformed their identity, most Igbo people continued conceptualizing the disease as an aberration and maintained the stigmatization of sufferers.
ISSN:0001-9720
1750-0184
DOI:10.1017/S0001972024000573