The Nuer
| Author | E. E. Evans-Pritchard |
|---|---|
| Original title | The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People |
| Subject | Social anthropology |
| Publisher | Clarendon Press |
Publication date | 1940 |
| Preceded by | Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande |
| Followed by | The Sanusi of Cyrenaica. |
The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People (first published 1940) was an anthropological account of the lineage and political systems of the Nuer people by the English anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard.
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: Kinship and Marriage Among the Nuer appeared in 1951, and Nuer Religion in 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]
Renaldo Rosaldo has criticised Evans-Pritchard for making invisible, in the subsequent body of The Nuer, the colonial power relations which enabled his ethnography.[3]
References
Further reading
- Tony Free, 'The politics and philosophical genealogy of Evans-Pritchard's The Nuer ', Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford 22:1 (1991), pp. 19–39
External links
- Elizabeth R. Busbee, E. E. Evans-Pritchard: Reading The Nuer in Context. Accessed 26 April 2012.