Cultural dynamism in the jewelry and body-marking practices among the Igbo in Nigeria

Abstract

The Igbo people are known for their entrepreneurial, itinerant, and adaptive tendencies, thus exemplifying the essence of cultural dynamism. This paper studies two aspects of Igbo dress culture, jewelry and body marking, to unravel the changes that occurred within one century or thereabout. The objectives of the study are to examine traditional jewelry and permanent body marking practices to determine the extent to which the practice has changed due to the forces of modernity. The study adopts a qualitative approach and relies on interviews, observations, and visual and textual data. The paper discovers that the Igbo have not entirely abandoned their traditional jewelry and body-marking dress traditions in favor of Western fashion. Igbo people appropriated foreign styles and modified some local styles to suit their philosophy and environment. The selective nature of the adoption manifests in the use of maxims and metaphors to reenact the essence of outmoded or old-fashioned styles entirely replaced by Western modes of dressing. The paper, therefore, argues that there will always be elements of continuity in instances where some change has occurred in traditions due to cultural contact, technological advancement, and other influences of modernity.