Nuer People and Cattle Three of the Essay

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Nuer People and Cattle

Three of the most prominent pieces of literature to explore the relationship between the Sudanese tribe of Nuer people and cattle include Sharon Hutchinson's "Nuer ethnicity militarized," the same author's "The cattle of money and the cattle of girls among the Nuer," and E.E. Evans-Pritchard's The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People. All of these works examine, either directly or indirectly, the relationship between this particular tribe and cattle from a variety of perspectives. The first mentioned work of Hutchinson's does so through examining the exacting civil war in Sudan during the 1990's and its causes in the time period preceding that decade. The second mentioned work of Hutchinson's does so by considering the social and economic implications of this relationship while primarily focusing on this latter aspect. Evans-Pritchard's book covers this topic extensively from a variety of angles including the social, the political, the spiritual and a number of different subsets of these categories.

There are several different facets that account for the principle difference between Evans-Pritchard's manuscript and the pair of articles by Hutchinson. The scope the former covers is substantially more exhaustive than that of the latter, for the simple fact that Evans-Pritchard dedicated an entire book to the subject whereas Hutchinson merely wrote articles of a couple of pages ("Nuer ethnicity militarized," for example, is only nine pages).

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However, the most eminent of these distinctions pertain to the time frame that both authors completed their works in. Whereas Evans-Pritchard's depicted the culture of the Nuer as it was during the early part of the 20th century, his counterpart articulated facets of that culture during the latter portion of the same century. The difference produced upon the Nuer people during 50 or so years that distinguishes the publication of these works, then, is staggering. This is particularly true from the economic perspective that Hutchinson considers in "The cattle of money and the cattle of girls among the Nuer." During the epoch in which Evans-Pritchard wrote his book, "literally no one parted willingly with a cow for money" (Hutchinson, 1991, p. 296). Yet during the time that Hutchinson composed this article, there was an alignment of currency with the valued possession of cattle among the Nuer people.

Additionally, one of the chief differences between the time frames during which Hutchinson and Evans-Pritchard composed their articles pertains to the tribal interactions between the Nuer and the Dinka. When the latter's book was published, there was some regularity in belligerent actions between the pair of tribes largely for the contestation of cattle -- which is the single source that Nuer spirituality, politics, and social life was based upon. The author comments that "the warlike Nuer could always restore….....

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