Evans Pritchard is one of the foremost anthropologist in the twentieth century as well as being one of the first to do serious work in Africa. In this book his main focus is the three oracles of the Azande in the Sudan. These being in order of decreasing importance: the poison oracle, the termite oracle, and the rubbing board oracle. He spent extended time researching and was directly feed information from an informant who being taught the secrets of witchdoctors. On the negative side it does have a somewhat condescending tone to African Culture as well as to Africans in general. However, this takes away little from the whole product. the Abridged version is almost as good as the unabridged and is well worth the read.

This is an abridged reprint of a book originally published in 1937.

This book by anthropologist Evans-Pritchard is best understood as a reaction against the work of the earlier anthropologist Levy-Bruhl. Levy-Bruhl had argued that "primitive" people have a "pre-logical" mentality, in that they are willing to accept worldviews that include contradictions. Evans-Pritchard disagrees, and uses the case study of the Azande, an African tribe, to make his point.

The Azande routinely appealled to "witchcraft" in their daily lives. (I cannot say how accurate Evans-Pritchard's account was of the Azande during his stay, or how much they have changed since the 30's.) For example, the Azande would explain at least some bad events as the result of witchcraft being practiced against them, and would use a "poison oracle" to determine who the witch was. ("Azande" is the noun, "Zande" is the adjective, like "Britons" vs. "British.") At first glance, this all seems irrational. However, Evans-Pritchard sets out the Azande beliefs in a way that shows that they form a fairly coherent system. He also notes that it was possible for him to live according to these beliefs during his stay with the Azande.

This book (and some of Evans-Pritchard's essays) have stimulated an immense amount of secondary literature. Peter Winch (see his articles in Bryan R. Wilson, ed., _Rationality_) argues that Evans-Pritchard did not go far enough, because Evans-Pritchard claims that the Zande beliefs (while not "pre-logical"), are nontheless unscientific, and mistaken. Winch argues that the test of whether something (e.g., electrons or witchraft) is real depends on the language and culture within which the judgment is being made. Consequently, it is simply a sort of category mistake to desribe the Zande beliefs as unscientific, since "science" is our standard of rationality, not their standard.

Charles Taylor (in an essay in the volume of his collected papers on "rationality and the human sciences") argues against Winch that, since the Azande beliefs have empirical consequences (e.g., there should be "witchcraft-substance" in the intestines of actual witches), it must be possible to test the Zande claims. Consequently, the Zande beliefs can fail (or conceivably pass) scientific verification.

If you are interested in contemporary anthropological studies of Africa, you should look for a more recent book. However, this is an interesting gateway to some challenging debates over how to think about rationality cross-culturally.

Although somewhat dated (being written around the turn of the century), this book is an excellent cultural survey of Zande magico-religious beliefs. The author spent time amongst the Azande of the Sudan and was one of the first westerners to study about the belief in witchcraft and sorcery. I would like to point out that in the terms of this book, witch is used to define malicious (or at least selfish) sorcerers. No offense to Wiccans or other New Agers, but traditional African religion does regard witchcraft as something that is evil, or at least negative. Aside from the material about witches, there is also a wealth of information about oracles and how the Azande detect the witches within their societ. This is a study of the religious beliefs of the Azande, and I strongly recommend that anyone with an interest in African cultural or religion to take a look at this book. Please do note that it is somewhat dated, and contains somewhat paternalistic views towards African society. And furthermore, Zande culture (which is alive and well in the Sudan) has changed somewhat over the years. Nonetheless, I strongly recommend this book

This is a common text for many introductory anthropology courses. It's apparently a classic ethnographic work, but honestly one of the most boring books I think I have ever read.

I disagree completely with the "reader from Washington" who wrote it is a boring book. Probably he/she didn't read more than the first two, more descriptive chapters. This book became "a classic" because it was a turning point in the history of Anthropology, specially because of its analysis of the political system of the Nuer.

This book is one of the classics of ethnography - indeed, one of the works which defines what ethnography and anthropology are.

The Nuer is an account of a group of pastoralists living in the Sudan as Evans-Pritchard knew them when he did field work in er... uh... the late 30s early 40s. The first half of the book is a detailed and lively (for an academic) account of their way of life, the seasonal rhythms of the year, and their intense interest in cattle.

The second half of the book than deals with the main subject of the book: the social organization of the Nuer. E-P moves to a greater and greater level of abstraction, creating a more and more crystalline view of the patterns of kinship and marriage that underlie Nuer life. The main structure is the lineage system - a group of people all related from a common ancestor through an unbroken line of male succession.

This book is famous because of E-P's account of the lineage system. The concept of the lineage and descent became key in anthropology, and E-P's Nuer materials helped provide the perfect example of the lineage as theorized by Radcliffe-Brown, E-P's teacher.

As a result of this book, anthropologists spend the next two decades running around all over the world looking for lineage systems. As it turns out, this sort of system is not particularly widespread across the world - at least not in its pure form. Indeed, it turns out that E-P's formulation was too neat and clean and too crystalline. As one pundit put it, "not even the Nuer are like The Nuer". So one drawback of the book is the false clarity that it provided. This was useful in the forties and fifties, but meant that eventually the study of kinship and social organization would have to move out of the paradigm E-P had set up.

Another problem with the book is the fact that it takes place in a vacuum. It is easy not to notice that the Nuer are under the sway of British authority and had recently been bombed when E-P arrived. The colonial context of the book is supressed.

There are other critcisms that could be made of the book - it is now a half-century behing the times - but it stands up today as a good read and a fascinating argument. The fact that reactions to it have been so extreme - overwhelming enthusiasm, abiding hatred, quizzical puzzlement, cow obsession - point to the fact that a book doesn't have to be loved forever to be read forever. Like all classics, The Nuer both good to read and good to think.