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

A clan is the largest unit of Nuer social structure that can be represented as a union of lineages tied together by a common agnatic kinship structure. While clans are less likely than lineages to be categories used in a Nuer’s expression of self-identification, their boundaries can be deduced by the rules of exogamous marriage which apply to them (i.e., those rules which specify the group beyond whose boundaries one must find a mate). Clans are not to be confused with tribes, as clans are a kinship system of identification, and may be dispersed throughout geographical areas in various ways, while tribes are a political system of identification and often include an element of territorial interest. Further, men usually seek wives from within their tribe, but are barred by rules of exogamy from seeking a wife from within their clan. Clans are composed of agnatic lineages which branch down from maximal lineages to minimal lineages, at which point individual family-units come into view. While some clans serve a dominant role in terms of their influence in Nuer culture, this dominance does not extend so far as to override the essential egalitarianism of the broader society.

Cognatic is an anthropological term which refers to systems that trace kinship and genealogical descent through both male and female members of a lineage (as opposed to agnatic, which trace such ties only through male members of a lineage). While Nuer society is organized around agnatic lineages organized into clans, cognatic values are sometimes called upon to express the relationship between clans, such that cognatic ties (together with what Evans-Pritchard calls mythological ties) serve to link non-agnatic clans into the broader fabric of Nuer identity considered as a whole.

A lineage is a kinship group in Nuer society, defined as an agnatic branch of one’s clan. Lineages are of various size, branching out from maximal lineages nearer to the level of the clan to the minimal lineages which exist near the familial level of kinship. Most Nuer will offer a lineage name as one of their first answers to questions of self-identification, and can trace their own lineage back to the level of the clan. Since it is a kinship structure that branches out with successive generations, lineages (and the clans which they comprise) are somewhat relative over time, as new ones grow into major branches and older ones recede too far into the past or grow too large to be considered useful representations of group identity.

Evans-Pritchard presents the Nuer as a subdivision of the larger Nilotic group of cultures and languages, which include the nearby Dinka (considered the most closely related to the Nuer) and others like the Luo and Shilluk. Evans-Pritchard tends to use “Nilotic” as a cultural term, but it is more commonly applied elsewhere as a linguistic term, referring the Nuer language and other related languages. The Nilotic languages, part of the Nilo-Saharan language family, includes people groups living in the region of the Nuer and Dinka in South Sudan, and then extending southward through Uganda, western Kenya, and northern Tanzania.