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The Nuer
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The Nuer

work by Evans-Pritchard
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The Nuer are a people primarily residing in South Sudan, known for their deep connection to cattle and their pastoral lifestyle. Their society is structured around autonomous communities and patrilineal lineages, with age sets playing a significant role in social organization. They speak an Eastern Sudanic language and practice a mixed economy of herding, millet cultivation, and fishing, adapting their movements between permanent villages and riverside camps based on seasonal flooding.1

E.E. Evans-Pritchard, a prominent British social anthropologist, conducted extensive fieldwork among the Nuer. His seminal work, The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People (1940), is a foundational ethnographic study. It details their segmentary lineage system, the importance of cattle in their social and economic life, and their decentralized, egalitarian political structure, often described as an acephalous society.23

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3 Britannica Sources
  1. Nuer
  2. E.E. Evans-Pritchard
  3. Nilot

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