The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People

Despite the breadth and complexity of the political system, it is not the only social structure in Nuer culture, and its complexity and order is matched by that of the lineage system. The lineage system overlaps with the political system in several important respects (many tribal segments, for instance, are centered on a dominant clan), but they represent different social structures. The lineage system, ordered around clans, is a genealogical structure built around family relations, whereas the tribal groups are political structures ordered around territories and blood-feuds. The largest genealogical unit in Nuer society is the clan, which is composed of several lineages. Each lineage is agnatic—meaning it is traced along the lines of male descent—and branches out into smaller and smaller lineages, down to individual family units. These lineages are of various sizes, descending from the level of clans to maximal lineages, major lineages, minor lineages, minimal lineages, and families. These lineages are not only abstract genealogical categories, but recognized groups with social functions: “Clans and lineages have names, possess various ritual symbols, and observe certain reciprocal ceremonial relations” (193).

The names and identities of these lineages, however, are relative over time, as new lineages emerge and older clan affiliations pass beyond living memory or become too populous to serve as an efficient marker of group identity. Clans are defined by their rules of exogamy (i.e., one must marry outside of one’s agnatic clan), so clans that became excessively large over time would become too cumbersome and restrictive to serve their purpose in Nuer society. Thus the thematic value of relativity in social groupings comes to the forefront again, as Evans-Pritchard reminds his readers of the relative but stable nature of Nuer group identities.

While lineages are not political units, they are often associated with villages and territories, such that a particular family group might serve as the nucleus of a village, and the name and value of their lineage would be associated with that village, even though the village might include people from other lineages. Certain clans thus take positions of social dominance (Evans-Pritchard calls them “aristocratic clans”), but this status does not override the essential egalitarianism of Nuer culture: “We have called them aristocrats, but do not wish to imply that Nuer regard them as of superior rank, for, as we have emphatically declared, the idea of a man lording it over others is repugnant to them” (215).

Various social processes exist to solidify relations between local lineages and outsiders who nonetheless live in close proximity, thus knitting together the genealogical and political structures of Nuer society. Nuer of other lineages, or even Dinka or other strangers who live among the Nuer, can be brought into a lineage by adoption or by the creation of fictive, mythological ties between different lineages. In some places, entire lineages of apparent Dinka descent remain in Nuer society and are associated with their own villages. Further, disparate agnatic lineages, or even different clans, can be joined together through cognatic ties (that is, through interrelationships traced through female as well as male descent). Evans-Pritchard writes:

Through the recognition of agnatic relationship between exogamous clans and of cognatic and mythological ties between clans not considered to be agnates, all the Nuer tribes are by assimilation of political to kinship values conceptualized as a single social system (240).

This overlapping of political group-values with kinship group-values results in a system in which the various levels of tribal and clan segments tend to coincide. Evans-Pritchard portrays this dynamic as an equilateral triangle, whose two ascending sides are each marked, at equivalent intervals, with the four major segments of the tribe and clan systems, thus forming a balanced whole. This illustration, together with his many illustrations throughout the chapter portraying the branched form of the lineage structure, help to give a visual representation to the abstract dynamics he is describing. The sub-theme of equilibrium in social groupings is present in this chapter’s reflections, but nowhere more so than at the end, where Evans-Pritchard’s illustration of the equilateral triangle presents the totality of Nuer society as a perfectly-balanced whole.