The Nuer

The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People is an ethnographical study by the British anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1902–73) first published in 1940. The work examined the political and familial systems of the Nuer people in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and is considered a landmark work of social anthropology. It was the first of three books authored by Evans-Pritchard on Nuer culture.

The Nuer
AuthorE. E. Evans-Pritchard
Original titleThe Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People
SubjectSocial anthropology
PublisherClarendon Press
Publication date
1940
Preceded byWitchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande (1937) 
Followed byThe Sanusi of Cyrenaica (1949) 

The structure of the book

The first two chapters - 'Cattle' and 'Oecology' - provided an environmental setting for the Nuer, cattle pastoralists who carried on limited horticulture. Evans-Pritchard emphasised the extent to which cattle dominated both their economic activity and their social ideals:

They consider that horticulture is an unfortunate necessity involving hard and unpleasant labor and not an ideal occupation, and they tend to act on the conviction that the larger the herd, the smaller need be the garden.[1]

The third chapter, 'Time and Space',

The Nuer was the first of three books which Evans-Pritchard would publish on the Nuer. The others were published as Kinship and Marriage Among the Nuer (1951) and Nuer Religion (1956).

In the book's introduction, Evans-Pritchard warmly thanked the Nuer for the welcome he felt they gave him:

my warmest thanks are further rendered to the many Nuer who made me their guest and befriended me. Rather than speak of individuals, I express my general respect for this brave and gentle people.[2]

Reception

The Nuer is considered a landmark work of social anthropology and has been discussed extensively. Audrey Richards considered that the book, though "unsatisfying in some respects, it is a brilliant tonic, and in the best sense of the word, an irritating book". This judgment has been echoed by modern academics.[3] Renaldo Rosaldo has criticised Evans-Pritchard for making invisible, in the subsequent body of The Nuer, the colonial power relations which enabled his ethnography.[4]

References
  1. The Nuer, p.80
  2. The Nuer, p.viii
  3. McKinnon 2000, p. 35.
  4. Renato Rosaldo, 'From the door of his tent: the fieldworker and the inquisitor', in J. Clifford and G. Marcus, eds., Writing Culture pp.77-97

Further reading
  • Free, T. (1991). "The Politics and Philosophical Genealogy of Evans-Pritchard's The Nuer" (PDF). Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford. 22 (1): 19–39.
  • Johnson, Douglas H. (1982). "Evans-Pritchard, the Nuer, and the Sudan Political Service". African Affairs. 81 (323): 231–46. JSTOR 721729.
  • McKinnon, Susan (2000). "Domestic Exceptions: Evans-Pritchard and the Creation of Nuer Patrilineality and Equality". Cultural Anthropology. 15 (1): 35–83. JSTOR 656640.
  • Morton, Christopher (2020). The Anthropological Lens: Rethinking E. E. Evans-Pritchard. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198812913.
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