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

The final set of social structures which Evans-Pritchard describes is the age-set system, which is ordered differently than the systems in the previous two chapters but which still shows evidence of some of the same repeated principles which underlie Nuer culture. Age-set systems are common across many different Nilotic and East African societies, but Evans-Pritchard points out for his professional anthropology audience that the Nuer form is constituted somewhat differently than other commonly-known age-set systems, particularly in regard to a more generalized status of “manhood” (as opposed to moving through discrete stages of manhood, as is the case in other societies).

The age-set system, while ordered differently from the tribe and clan systems, is nonetheless an important structural element in Nuer society. Structured primarily around men, it is comprised of cohorts of contemporaries, male individuals who are inducted into a particular age-set upon their accession to manhood. This transition is done in a ritual between the ages of 14 and 16, in which a group of boys will be ritually cut with six long, horizontal lines across their foreheads, forming scars that will remain for their whole lives. All the boys thus inducted into manhood across a series of successive years (averaging about 10) will be considered the cohort of an age-set, distinct from the sets that came before and the ones which will come after. All the boys initiated in a decade’s time thus become their own distinct group, with other decade-long age-sets of young men, full adults, middle-aged men, and elders above them in the system. They will remain a group as they pass through all these ages of life, though there is no significant differentiation in status between them. The only major transition is the passage from boyhood to manhood, Evans-Pritchard describing, “There is a sudden and great change in status from boyhood to manhood, but the modes of behaviour which differentiate these two grades do not distinguish one set from another, for the privileges of manhood are enjoyed by all members of all the sets equally” (254).

At any given time, there will usually be six age-sets in existence, though the upper two are sparsely populated due to the attrition of death in old age. Thus four age-sets comprise the main body, which are roughly distinguished as senior sets and junior sets. The age-set system differs from the tribal and lineage systems in that while a person’s identity and role in the latter two tend to be fixed throughout their lifetime, the age-set system sees a person passing through various stages and roles, particularly in the transition from boyhood to manhood, and then again (though less significantly) from one’s age-set being a considered a junior class to a senior class in society. This provides a system throughout Nuer society in which men’s roles are structurally defined toward one another by statuses of either seniority, equality, or juniority, and those values will change with time as age-sets advance. This speaks to the theme of relativity, in which certain age-set values change relative to time, yet remain ordered and balanced within an unchanging structure.

The function of age-sets in Nuer culture thus constitutes yet another example of what Evans-Pritchard refers to as “social structure,” identifications which explain the interrelationships between groups and which have a high degree of consistency in their application. In Nuer society, the social structures of tribes, clans, and age-sets provide explanatory grids in which each person can understand and act upon their role in the broader culture. These social structures interact with one another, and in some cases interweave with one another, such that one can only speak of the separation of political functions and kinship functions in the abstract.

This leads Evans-Pritchard to a final set of reflections on sociological theory, in which he suggests that the interrelationship of groups, and particularly of their varying ways of identifying themselves relative to other groups, lies at the heart not only of the social anthropology of Indigenous peoples, but of human sociology as a whole. Here Evans-Pritchard reveals himself to be not merely a social anthropologist delivering a report on an Indigenous culture, but a scholar who hopes to help shape the future of his discipline, or at least to point the way for future scholars: “We feel like an explorer in the desert whose supplies have run short. He sees vast stretches of country before him and perceives how he would try to traverse them; but he must return and console himself with the hope that perhaps the little knowledge he has gained will enable another to make a more successful journey” (266).