Evans-Pritchard and the Prophets
3
These brief remarks do little more than sketch the bare outline of some
of the ideological and organizational features of contemporary social anthro-
pology. However, if this situation is conceded to be accurate, then how can
one account for the anomaly of Evans-Pritchard’s people, the Nuer of the
Southern Sudan, emerging over the past quarter-century as “anthropology’s
people,” open to comment by all and sundry? The intellectual process was
set in motion innocently enough by Gluckman in 1956, with the appearance
of his reinterpretation of the Nuer feud. In the succeeding decade, two other
essays appeared in print (Sahlins 1961; Buchler 1963). However, it was not
until a few years later, with influential articles by Beidelman (1966) and Firth
(1966) that the Nuer industry was put on a firm and steady footing which
presently shows no signs of abating. Thus the situation is worthy of comment,
even if in a cursory fashion, before eventually focusing on an enigma which
emerges from the overview. However, in addressing the problem, it is recog
nized that there can be no single or simple explanation, but a number of
obvious ones offer themselves in concert.
1. Why the Nuer?
First, there is both the requisite quantity, but also the less rarely
encountered quality of the ethnography in the sense of internal consistency
which has allowed for informed reanalyses. As Beidelman has pointed out
(1974a; 559), Evans-Pritchard must rank as our greatest ethnographer, since
in addition to scattered monographs and articles on various east African
peoples (see Beidelman 19746), he produced an ethnographic corpus on two
quite different Sudanese societies. Moreover, the extensive material on the
Nuer was the first to demonstrate an explicit analytical relevance in the form
of a persistent and overriding concern for the structures of and the relation
ship between the social and moral orders. In the Nuer instance, the end
product is likely the closest to a complete ethnographic portrait we shall ever
have. The results are so tantalizingly proximate to the ideal that over the
years many others have felt compelled to add the finishing touches with
their own brushwork. In most cases the result has been a positive con
tribution to our understanding of these people and selected topics.
A second explanation for the persistent interest in this material leads us
from the realm of pure scholarship to more mundane academic considera
tion. Until the post-war era, a mere handful of anthropologists dominated
the African ethnographic terrain. In addition to Evans-Pritchard, these in
cluded Fortes and Forde for West Africa and Gluckman and Schapera for
South and Central Africa. In turn they spawned a second generation of
Africanists with broadly equitable interests pursued in the same region of
the continent. Curiously, Evans-Pritchard, the first major figure of modern
anthropology to work in Africa, did not generate a comparable coterie of
students to follow in his footsteps in the Nilotic southern Sudan. 3
3 Although others worked in the Sudan, only Godfrey Lienhardt did fieldwork
among a Nilotic group.