A Comparative Analysis: Everyday Experiences of Disability in Sierra Leone

In this article, we compare conceptions of disability in Sierra Leone using the theoretical category of victimhood. We show how it intersects with how: 1) traditional perceptions of disability locate a person within a moral economy of blame and social remedies, 2) how disability discourses within a segregated setting are being affected by multiple postconflict ideas around victims and victimization, and 3) how dependency and success are created as disabled people internalize or reject the victimization. In these ethnographic snapshots of the everyday, we hope to show how people reinterpret discourses around disability to suit their own needs in fluid, multilayered, and sometimes even contradictory ways.