Conceptualizations of Children with Disabilities among the Bulsa of Northern Ghana
Date
2019-07-19
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Abstract
Across the world, people meet their healthcare needs using a variety of approaches. The Bulsa located in Northern Ghana are no different. They have historically relied on both contemporary healthcare and traditional healthcare to address their health-related problems. This research explores how children with disabilities (CWDs) are conceptualized in Bulsa traditional healthcare, in the context of a system that many anthropologists have studied with reference to shrines. The shrine system, which encompasses governance, illnesses, belongingness, health in general, and inheritance in some African societies, has long been a subject of anthropological investigation (Mather 2003, Kirby 1993, Rattray 1932, Fortes 1967). As valuable as these studies have been, the investigation of disability in the context of the shrine system has at best only been treated in a peripheral way. As a way to uncover what CWDs signify in the shrine system, the research entailed interviewing fifty informants and conducting five household group discussions. Some individuals interviewed were parents of CWDs. The thesis research was also informed by my own lived experience with disability in Bulsa society. The investigations found that the role of the shrine system in disability and illness management in Bulsa society included two dimensions: ingestion of herbs and drugs; and reverence for invisible agencies, such as wen, jadok, and their associated processes. Moreover, we observed that people mostly use the term kikiruk in the context of CWDs and the term jadok for some adult acquired disability. Both terms carry with them a certain degree of humiliation and discrimination with respect to their victims, but the kikiruk term carries the greatest consequence for CWDs and their families.
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Keywords
Ghana, children with disabilities, autoethnography, rituals, traditional medicine, autoethnography, rituals, conceptualizations, shrine
Citation
Achuroa, D. A. (2019). Conceptualizations of Children with Disabilities among the Bulsa of Northern Ghana (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.