Introduction
What advantage does Evans Pritchard’s study have over Hutchinson’s book? Well it is apparent that even though Sharon Hutchinson and E. E. Evans-Pritchard were passionate men that were conducting their fieldwork in places that were similar, and among people that would be considered to be similar, their discoveries and findings not to mention their published ethnographies are blindingly different. Each has something that the other one dos not. However, Hutchinson is seen as the guy that has all of the right answers, especially when it comes to the Nuer people. However, their differences can basically be recognized to the changes that were occurring in Nuerland among the years of 1930s and the 1980s. Their differences could likewise be the result from the anthropologists' styles of conducting field research and personalities. It was clear that E. E. Evans-Pritchard was the one that studied the Nuer and produced a more thorough record of his interactions than what Hutchinson did. Evans-Pritchard's also talks about Nuer religion and cosmology in his books more than Hutchinson. Additionally, the complete texts of their findings are organized in ways that imitate the anthropologists' theoretical interests and styles. With that said, this essay will discuss the advantages Evans Pritchard’s study has over Hutchinson’s book by showing what was lost in Hutchinson’s analysis that was present in Evans-Pritchard’s book.
As talked about earlier, Hutchinson was known as the woman people would go to or research when it came down to works regarding the Nuer people. It can be argued that Hutchinson spent a lot of his time including the information in her work that Edward E. Evans-Pritchard may have overlooked. However, that is not saying that there were not thing lost or missing in Hutchinson’s book that maybe E.E Evans Pritchard may have covered in his works. The research has mentioned in other sections of this project, a lot of changes that occurred in southern Sudan throughout the decades that were being passed among Evans-Pritchard's and Hutchinson's research studies.
Research shows that even though both anthropologists were able to come across the Nuer as burdened peoples, the control of the British foreign government was extremely dissimilar from that of the Sudanese administration. In Evans-Pritchard's book, he covered more of this regime and how it affected the Nuer people. Hutchinson's text left some of this out and when it was mentioned it was paralled to the social changes they were going through, but very little on the Nuer oppression by the British. In Further, Evans-Pritchard's also discusses more on the Nuer survival arrangements which were changed radically as a result of government-imposed rearrangement projects and the improved presence of a cash economy.
Hutchinson's text puts more of an emphasis on such socioeconomic and political changes. Nuer Dilemmas similarly observes the ways that western Leek Nuer and eastern Jikany Nuer responded to change by means of their social interactions. She was able to cover life among the Nuer during the chaotic social regime and also what the Nuer thought about the changes the were going on around them. However, Hutchinson's leaves of things such as the pastoral group but Evans-Pritchard managed to capture it. For example, Evans-Pritchard's book makes the point that the Nuer as a pastoral and unified group was largely untouched by the British colonization, even though this was obviously not the case, bearing in mind the situations surrounding his recruitment into the field. It is extremely probable that the "Nuerosis" of which he speaks caused from Nuer unwillingness to provide data to a British investigator .
In dissimilarity to the contempt with which Evans-Pritchard appeared to regard the Nuer, Hutchinson obviously has an excessive deal of respect for the Nuer as people and as associates of a community that is large community. She appears to speak very extremely of the Nuer pride. Hutchinson on the other hand shows an enormous deal of respect for the Nuer linguistic, which she speaks effortlessly. Nuer Dilemmas actually starts with a start to Nuer language, so the reader is able to recognize its appeal and subtlety.
As a manuscript, Nuer Dilemmas is highly common. There is not much in there that is detailed oriented like Evans-Pritchard. In his book, as mentioned earlier, Hutchinson did not go thoroughly into explicit detail as Evans-Pritchard However, Hutchinson makes the following point, "this book is unusual, I doubt, in the extent to which it was poised in active cooperation with Nuer not just as informers but as critical critics" . Hutchinson is able to do things such as utilize various voices of individual informants, which was something that Evans-Pritchard, did not do. Evans-Pritchard admitted to not having any persons from whom he gathered most of his data but he with that information, he was able to get more detailed material that involves the everyday lives of the Nuer people, which Hutchinson was not able to cover in his work.
Further, Hutchinson is extremely thorough when she mentions the inclusion of women in the Nuer culture. She makes the following point "My main goal in this book is to express an accepting of how Nuer women and men have variously gone through these last six decades of history that was turbulent and have conformed that experience into their contemporary values and social life" . However, Evans-Pritchard painted a different picture.
The Nuer as transcribed by Evans-Pritchard portrays women as minimal characters show little significance on political actions. Evans-Pritchard showed the women mainly in their duties of rearing children and domestic duties. He also dealt with things like their superstition which is something that Hutchinson's kept out of her book. Evans-Pritchard explained that while Nuer women did not really play much of a key part in public political life, they surely have an influence on their social lives of the community, and this impression should not have been ignored like it was in Hutchinson's observation. Hutchinson's overlooked this because he spent a lot of his investigation on the women’s role on politics which was close to zero participation. Did Hutchinson's waste her time exploring something that was leading her anywhere in the study? Many experts would believe that it was a travesty that Hutchinson's left a great deal out of her book when she did not focus more on the Nuer women and their domestic roles. Some criticize Evans-Pritchard and say he did not include enough public activities in his work. However, one could debate in Evans-Pritchard's justification that his presence as a white male could have possibly limited his observation to these public activities, commonly led by men. Hutchinson, as a researcher, had much bigger admission to private Nuer life which would explain why she is looked at as the one that had all of the answers. Evans-Pritchard's
However, even with this access, she still overlooked things like the several remarkable components of their lifestyle which involves the cattle that the Nuer people are caring for. Evans-Pritchard unlike Hutchinson does mention that it is the men who are living as herdsman are they are the ones who direct cattle to other areas of Sudan. Evans-Pritchard unlike Hutchinson's also mentions that the Nuer tribes depend upon these cattle for obvious reasons for instance milk and meat. Hutchinson overlooked things like the ritual. Other rituals exceptional to the Nuer tribes are the acts that involve things like the cutting of arrowed lines that go across a boy’s face so as to display his shift from childhood to manhood, exchanging cattle to represent an aim of marriage among a male and a female, and going through explicit, arranged steps in the procedure of a dead family member’s body being buried.. Hutchinson was not able to show all of that in his observation. Evans-Pritchard did get a huge deal of disapproval, from Rosaldo among others, for his depiction of the Nuer as ahistorical and pastoral. Hutchinson, in her ethnography, debates this pastoral representation, and speaks to the criticisms of Rosaldo and others concerning the ahistorical nature of ethnography in the past. Therefore, Hutchinson transcribes in the past tense, to endorse that the "ethnographic present" is passing.
In conclusion, it is clear that both men did a phenomenal job when it came to the observation of the Nuer people. Until this day, Hutchinson his hailed for he work and the details of it. However, Hutchinson did fail at including a lot of other detailed information. There were some things that she did overlook or for whatever reason, chose not to include her book. Because she is more popular than Evans-Pritchard, many experts still look at her information as the superior material. It is clear after looking into both studies that Evan-Pritchard does have quite of bit of information that Hutchinson did not show in her works. Nevertheless, it is obvious that Evans-Pritchard was able to capture a whole lot of information that Hutchinson did not.
Works Cited
Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. "A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People." Oxford: Oxford University, 1969. 1-320.
Hutchinson, Sharon E. Nuer Dilemmas: Coping with Money, War, and the State. 1-420: University of California Press; First Edition edition, 2005.
