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The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People
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Themes
The Centrality of Cattle to Nuer Culture
Cattle are the main form of livelihood for the Nuer and constitute a central aspect of their culture. Much of their diet is derived from the cattle they raise—primarily milk, but also blood and meat to a lesser extent. As Evans-Pritchard notes, “Although cattle have many uses they are chiefly useful for the milk they provide” (21). Other dietary sources, like millet and fish, are regarded as secondary and of lesser value to the place of milk, even during times of the year where they might serve as the main form of nutrition. Much of the material culture of the Nuer is also derived from cattle, whose hides and horns provide the main source for belts, bags, and other utensils. The physical terrain of Nuerland is well adapted to cattle herding and less amenable to horticulture, so ecological concerns support the central position of cattle in Nuer culture.
Beyond being a source of food and material culture, cattle husbandry also provides a linguistic and conceptual idiom for the expression of Nuer values. “Their social idiom is a bovine idiom” (19). Terms for color, size, shape, and other features often have references to cattle. People are more frequently called by the name of their favorite ox or cow than by their own personal name, and cattle themselves become—through marriage or other forms of transfer—a medium through which social relationships are established, affirmed, and remembered. Evans-Pritchard laments that in the early stages of his research, he could seldom get the Nuer youths who spoke with him to talk about anything except cattle: “They are always talking about their beasts. I used sometimes to despair that I never discussed anything with the young men but livestock and girls, and even the subject of girls led inevitably to that of cattle” (18-19).
Cattle also serve broader social functions in Nuer society. Cattle frequently serve as the object of wars; conducting raids, chiefly for cattle, against such groups as the Dinka, is a regular feature of Nuer life. They stand at the center of Nuer religious life, as the sacrifice of a cow, though rare in other circumstances, is a main feature of many rites and rituals. The nature of cattle husbandry as a livelihood helps promote stability in the Nuer’s egalitarian culture, as livestock are not a resource that can be easily hoarded within the constraints of the land use available to the Nuer. Thus, the nature of cattle as the most prized commodity—but one that does not admit of hoarding within their environmental constraints—results in a social system in which there is not a glaring wealth gap or class stratification.
Ecological Influence on Human Culture
One of the primary theses of The Nuer is that the ecology of the Nuer’s surroundings exercises a significant influence on multiple features of their culture. Evans-Pritchard sets out this point early in his introductory section: “It will be seen that the Nuer political system is consistent with their oecology” (4). The environment of Nuerland keeps the Nuer culture balanced within the system of equilibrium which has developed—specifically, environmental constraints promote cattle husbandry over horticulture, and periodic transhumance over either migration or permanent domiciles. The grassy terrain and clay soil serve better as pasturage than cropland, and the annual rotation of floods and droughts require movements between villages and seasonal camps: “These characteristics interact with one another and compose an environmental system which directly conditions Nuer life and influences their social structure” (55). Such environmental influences promote cattle husbandry as the main form of livelihood and prevent the accumulation of wealth beyond what the land will maintain and the requirements of transhumance will allow. Further, the positive values which Nuer culture attaches to cattle husbandry mean that they find their territory admirably suited to living the best possible life. This, in turn, reduces the temptation to migrate elsewhere, and allows Nuer society to remain in its state of relative equilibrium between ecological features and cultural values.
The annual cycle of movements also exercises a shaping influence on Nuer culture. It directs the division of domestic duties in such a way as to help distinguish the difference between boyhood and manhood (on which the age-set system depends), for instance, in employing youths with the tasks of fishing during certain seasons of the year. It also sets territorial boundaries which include space for both villages and seasonal camps, and those territories form the basis for the Nuer tribal divisions. Further, the requirements of such frequent moves mean that agriculture and horticulture can only be practiced on a small scale, without the freedom to raise long-growing crops. Once again, this points in the direction of favoring a cattle culture over an agricultural one:
The dominance of the pastoral value over horticultural interests is in accord with oecological relations which favour cattle husbandry at the expense of horticulture. Nuer values and oecological relations, therefore, combine to maintain the bias toward cattle husbandry […] (81).
This highlights the intersecting forces of environment that shape Nuer culture and values.
Relativity and Equilibrium in Social Groupings
Evans-Pritchard believes that Nuer social groupings exhibit pervasive aspects of both relativity and equilibrium in their subdivisions. Further, while his focus is on describing the nature of Nuer social life, he suggests in several places throughout his book that these aspects of relativity and equilibrium are universal features of human social organization, of which Nuer culture simply gives a uniquely clear example. In his descriptions of the tribal system (political), the lineage system (genealogical), and the age-set system (contemporaries’ cohorts), Evans-Pritchard notes that each is arranged in subdivisions with reference to other branches or cohorts: “it is a group only in relation to other segments of the same kind and they jointly form a tribe only in relation to other Nuer tribes […], and without these relations very little meaning can be attached to the concepts of tribal segment and tribe” (147). In the case of tribes, they are subdivided into smaller tribal sections, which are then further subdivided into even smaller sections (which Evans-Pritchard identifies with markers of primary, secondary, and tertiary, and portrays them graphically with the use of boxes split into smaller and smaller rectangular sections). For lineages, clans are divided into a branching system of maximal lineages, major lineages, minor lineages, and minimal lineages, down to individual family units. In age-sets, the overall system is divided into cohorts of contemporaries, and there may be up to six of these age-sets living at any one time.
Evans-Pritchard notes that these subdivided groups serve as identity markers, but there is a sense of relativity in their expression and application of identity values; such identity values are largely constructed only in reference to opposing groups in the system. In general, these identity markers are most strongly expressed at the smallest levels of local and familial attachments. A Nuer person might see themselves as a member of their minimal lineage, for example, and while they will acknowledge the existence of a broader segment (the minor lineage) of which they are also a part, their identification with the minor lineage only finds active expression when circumstances require the associated group of that minimal lineage to take up a position against a minor lineage in the opposing branch of the clan structure. That is to say, the values of the identity markers (especially those representing larger groups) are relative, often only finding expression with reference to other identity groups: “Hence a man can be a member of a group and yet not a member of it. […]. Thus a man is a member of his tribe in its relation to other tribes, but he is not a member of his tribe in the relation of his segment of it to other segments of the same kind” (137). In a similar way to the lineage system, the unity of a Nuer tribe will only be seen when an external threat appears against the whole tribe (such as hostility from another tribe); otherwise, the Nuer’s primary attachment will be to their own local political units: the village and tertiary tribal section. The names and conceptual boundaries of these groups are also relative, changing with the passage of time as older political and clan associations recede beyond living memory, to be replaced by newly developing branches of Nuer society.
This system of subdivisions also expresses the equilibrium in Nuer culture. Each political and familial group is balanced out by the presence of another group in a corresponding part of the structure. In the political and genealogical arrangements, this equilibrium is maintained by the existence and growth of various branches of Nuer society. In the case of age-sets, equilibrium is not a structural feature of the society at large, but of the passage of time. Age-set “succeed one another for ever, but there are never more than six in existence and the relative positions occupied by these six sets at any time are fixed structural points through which actual sets of persons pass in endless succession” (107). Each age-set is composed of roughly the same number of years, and as the men of that age-set proceed through life, the age-sets ahead of them progressively die out, even as new ones appear behind them, leading to a balanced, ever-moving progression of six age-sets in Nuer society. Thus, both equilibrium and a relativity of identity values can be seen in all the major structures of Nuer society: “political values are relative and […] the political system is an equilibrium between opposed tendencies towards fission and fusion” (147-48).
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