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

“It will be seen that the Nuer political system is consistent with their oecology.”

Here Evans-Pritchard provides a succinct statement of one of his main points: that the forms and structures of Nuer culture align with the ecological features of their surroundings. Since the restrictions of their environment necessitate a lifestyle of transhumance and cattle husbandry, along with a subsistence level of horticulture, ecological considerations push toward social systems which are relatively egalitarian.

“Indeed, the Nuer have no government, and their state might be described as an ordered anarchy.”

Taken out of context, this quote could lead to misunderstandings about Nuer culture, as “anarchy” tends to invite suppositions of chaos and lawlessness in many reader’s minds. Evans-Pritchard’s book makes it clear, however, that the Nuer have a highly complex political system which maintains a stable social equilibrium across a group numbering in the hundreds of thousands; it is merely anarchic in the sense that it has no centralized authority.

“The inquiry is directed to two ends: to describe the life of the Nuer, and to lay bare some of the principles of their social structure.”

Here Evans-Pritchard simply states the goals of the book. The two halves of this sentence roughly correspond to the structure of the book’s main chapters: Chapters 1-3 deal with cultural observations of the Nuer’s life and livelihood, and Chapters 4-6 with the social structures evidence in their tribal, lineage, and age-set systems.