Michael Shi Essays (542 words) - Ethnic Groups In South Sudan

Michael Shi Reading Response 3 In The Nuer : A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political institutions of a Nilotic People , an ethnography published in 1940, Edward E van Evans-Pritchard describes the Nuer people and how they live, focusing on their unique relationship with cattle. The Nuer people hold cattle in high regard and "will gladly risk their lives to defend their herds or to pillage those of their neighbors" (Evans-Pritchard, 16). According to his study, cattle play a very important role in essentially all social situations. Birth, death, marriage, coming-of-age rituals, social standing, and language are all associated with cattle in some major way. Sharon Elaine Hutchinson followed up on Evans-Pritchard's work 40 years later in Nuer Dilemmas : Coping with Money, War, and the State. In the chapter "Orientations" Hutchinson reflects on Evans-Pritchard's The Nuer and some of the possible shortcomings of his study. She argues that Evans-Pritchard viewed the culture of the Nuer people in a static way and aims to depict the Nuer in a more dynamic and less generalized way in her study. In "Blood, Cattle, and Cash," Hutchinson writes about the Nuer people's attitudes towards money and cattle and how it changed over time through British colonialism. Both readings were ethnographical studies, but came from very different time periods. Hutchinson's study was composed in collaboration with the Nuer as both informants and critical commentators (Hutchinson, 29) whereas Evans-Pritchard did his study without active participation from the Nuer people. When reading about the Nuer people's close relationship with their cattle, I immediately thought back to Scott's lecture about domestication and his argument that humans domesticated themselves. Evans-Pritchard had a similar thought as Scott, writing "It has been remarked that the Nuer might be called parasites of the cow, but it might be said with equal force that the cow is a parasite of the Nuer, whose lives are spent in ensuring its wel fare" (Evans-Pritchard, 36). Evans-Pritchard concludes that their relationship is a symbiotic one, which is the same conclusion I came to when reading Scott's piece in the second week of the course. I found the relationship between cattle and social standing to be interesting and was thinking about if anything similar appears in other societies. People owning exotic or dangerous animals as a symbol of status and the video we saw in class of cock fighting were two examples I thought of. I find it interesting to see the same human behavior manifest itself in different, isolated societies. Another thing I found thought-provoking was Hutchinson's point that Evans-Pritchard's writing may have been influenced by his background. It makes me wonder how objective we can be when recording anything qualitative, since our background and previous experiences will always influence how we interpret things. Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan. 1940. The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People. Oxford University Press. Chapter 1: Interest in Cattle (pp. 16-50) Hutchinson, Sharon Elaine. 1996. Nuer Dilemmas: Coping with Money, War, and the State. University of California Press. "Orientations" (pp. 21-37) and "Blood, Cattle, and Cash" (pp. 56-102)