Nilotic Women: a Diachronic Perspective

John W. Burton

doi:10.1017/S0022278X00056937

Nilotic Women: a Diachronic Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008

John W. Burton

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The pastoral Nilotic-speaking peoples of the Southern Sudan have been observed by missionaries, merchants, and casual travellers for more than a century. Significant advances in social theory have been formulated on the basis of Nilotic ethnography. In the light of the voluminous literature recorded by these and other authorities, it may now be of value to draw into clearer relief the nature of the status and authority of the women in these ‘traditional’ societies, which are increasingly drawn into and irrevocably changed by exogenous sources.

Type: Articles
Information: The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , September 1982 , pp. 467 - 491

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022278X00056937 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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^{page 467 note 1} The pastoral Nilotic-speaking Atuot of the Southern Sudan are estimated to number 35,000. Field research was made possible through the generous support of the Social Science Research Council and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. I would also like to thank Atuot women for their co-operation in this research, especially Alak Angui, Iwer Deng, Ayan Alau, Amer Aruktung, Ayan Luk, Acol Ijuong, and Alak Bilieu.

^{page 467 note 2} See Bernatzik, H., Gari-Gari: the call of the African wilderness (London, 1936);Google ScholarHofmayr, P. W., Die Schilluk (St. Augustin, 1925);Google ScholarHowell, Paul P., ‘Observations on the Shilluk of the Upper Nile: the laws of homicide and the legal functions of the Reth’, in Africa (London), 22, 1925, pp. 97–119;Google ScholarLienhardt, R. Godfrey, ‘Nilotic Kings and their Mother's Kin’,Google Scholar in ibid. 25, 1955, pp. 39–42, and ‘Anuak Village Headmen’, in ibid. 27, 1957, pp. 341–55; Bacon, C. R., ‘The Anuak’, in Sudan Notes and Records (Khartoum), 5, 1922, pp. 82–80 and 113–29;Google Scholar and Santandrea, Stefano, ‘Jur-Luo Tests and Comments: the family’, in Anthropos (Fribourg), 72, 1977, pp. 557–609.Google Scholar

^{page 468 note 1} Hammond, Dorothy and Jablow, Alta, The Africa That Never Was :four centuries of British writing about Africa (New York, 1980), p. 148.Google Scholar

^{page 468 note 2} Evans-Pritchard, E. E., ‘Sources, with Particular Reference to the Southern Sudan’, in Cahiers d'études africaines (Paris), II, 1971, p. 132.Google Scholar

^{page 468 note 3} Ibid. p. 131. Cf. Werne, Ferdinand, Expedition to Discover the Sources of the White Nile (London, 1848), Vols. I and II.Google Scholar

^{page 468 note 4} Evans-Pritchard, loc. cit. p. 132. Cf. Petherick, John, Egypt, the Soudan and Central Africa (Edinburgh, 1861).Google Scholar

^{page 469 note 1} Evans-Pritchard, loc. cit. p. 134.

^{page 469 note 2} Ibid. p. 143. Cf. Casati, Gaetano, Ten Years in Equatorial Africa (London, 1891).Google Scholar

^{page 469 note 3} Evans-Pritchard, loc. cit. p. 145. Cf. Seligman, C. G. and Seligman, B. Z., Pagan Tribes of the Nilotic Sudan (London, 1932).Google Scholar

^{page 469 note 4} In the light of the excellence of his ethnographic studies, it is regretful to have to note Evans-Pritchard's quip that it was ‘British wives and motor cars’ that spoiled relations between indigenous peoples and the colonial administration; ‘Some Reminiscences and Reflections of Fieldwork’, in Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, 4, 1973, pp. 1–12.Google Scholar But then, one can also cite his general neglect of women in his ethnographies – see also Beidelman, T. O., ‘The Ethnographer as Translator’, in Times Literary Supplement (London), 12 12 1980, p. 1420.Google Scholar

^{page 470 note 1} Millais, J. G., Far Away Up the Nile (London, 1924), p. 86.Google Scholar

^{page 470 note 2} Sudan Notes and Records was considered by Evans-Pritchard to be ‘the best of its kind in Africa, if not in the world’; ‘Anthropological Research in the Southern Sudan’, in Sudan Society (Khartoum), I, 1962, pp. 9–14.Google Scholar

^{page 470 note 3} Millais, op. cit. p. 72.

^{page 470 note 4} Wyndham, Richard, The Gentle Savage (London, 1936), p. 36.Google Scholar

^{page 470 note 5} Ibid. pp. 53–4.

^{page 471 note 1} Ibid. p. 81.

^{page 471 note 2} Ibid. p. 131.

^{page 471 note 3} Bernatzik, op. cit. p. 20.

^{page 471 note 4} Ibid. p. 32.

^{page 471 note 5} Ibid. p. 103.

^{page 471 note 6} Fothergill, Edward, Five Years in the Sudan (London, 1911), p. 67. Cf. Hofmayr, op. cit.Google Scholar

^{page 471 note 7} Langley, Michael, No Woman's Country: travels in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (London, 1950), p. 107.Google Scholar

^{page 472 note 1} Ibid.

^{page 472 note 2} Leacock, Eleanor, ‘Introduction’, to Engels, Friedrich, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, edited by Leacock, E. (New York, 1972).Google Scholar

^{page 472 note 3} Johnson, Douglas, ‘Tribal Boundaries and Border Wards: Nuer-Dinka relations in the Upper Nile Province, c. 1860–1976’, 23rd Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association, Philadelphia, 1980, and ‘Prophets of Peace Among the Nuer’, 79th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington, D.C., 1980;Google Scholar and Burton, John W., ‘Atuot Ethnicity: an aspect of Nilotic ethnology’, in Africa, 51, 1981, pp. 496–508.CrossRef Google Scholar

^{page 473 note 1} Cf. Baxter, Paul and Almagor, Uri (eds.), Age, Generation and Time (New York, 1978).Google Scholar

^{page 474 note 1} Kauffman, Anton, 1881, ‘The White Nile Valley and its Inhabitants’, in Toniolo, Elias and Hill, Richard (eds.), The Opening of the Nile Basin (London, 1974), pp. 140–203.Google Scholar

^{page 474 note 2} Ibid. p. 155.

^{page 474 note 3} Ibid. p. 174.

^{page 474 note 4} Ibid. p. 201.

^{page 474 note 5} Fergusson, V. H., The Story of Fergie Bey (London, 1930), p. 194.Google Scholar

^{page 475 note 1} Huffman, Ray, Nuer Customs and Folklore (London, 1931), p. 15.Google Scholar

^{page 475 note 2} Ibid. pp. 21–4.

^{page 475 note 3} Ibid. p. 26.

^{page 476 note 1} Ibid. p. 42. See also Mohr, R., ‘Ricerche sull'etica sessuale di Alcune Popolazioni dell'Africa Centrale e Orientale’, in Archivio per l'Anthropologia e la Ethnologia (Rome), 64, 1969, pp. 157–315.Google Scholar

^{page 476 note 2} Leacock, Eleanor, ‘Introduction’, in Etienne, Mona and Leacock, E. (eds.), Women and Colonization: anthropological perspectives (New York, 1980), p. 11.Google Scholar

^{page 477 note 1} Evans-Pritchard, E. E., Some Aspects of Marriage and the Family Among the Nuer (Lusaka, 1945), p. 64.Google Scholar

^{page 477 note 2} See Burton, J. W., God's Ants: a study of Atuot religion (St Agustin, 1980), and ‘Atuot Age Categories and Marriage’, in Africa, 50, 1980, pp. 146–60.Google Scholar See also James, W., Kwanimpa : the making of the Uduk people (Oxford, 1979), pp. 34–87.Google Scholar

^{page 478 note 1} Zahan, Dominique, The Religion, Spirituality and Thought of Traditional Africa (Chicago, 1979), p. 21.Google Scholar

^{page 478 note 2} Kenny, Michael, ‘The Powers of Lake Victoria’, in Anthropos, 72, 1977, pp. 717–33.Google Scholar See also Southall, A. W., ‘Twinship and Symbolic Structure’, in LaFontaine, J. S. (ed), The Interpretation of Ritual (London, 1972), p. 88.Google Scholar

^{page 478 note 3} Kenny, loc. cit. pp. 728 and 721.

^{page 478 note 4} See Burton, J. W., ‘The Fighting and the Fishing Spear: symbols and power among the Atuot of the Southern Sudan’, 77th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Los Angeles, 1978, and ‘The Wave is My Mother's Husband: a piscatorial theme in pastoral Nilotic ethnology, in Cahiers d'études africaines, 21, 1982, pp.Google Scholar

^{page 478 note 5} Cf. Lienhardt, R. G., ‘The Shilluk of the Upper Nile’, in Forde, Daryll (ed.), African Worlds: studies in the cosmological ideas and social values of African peoples (London, 1954).Google Scholar

^{page 479 note 1} Westermann, Diedrich, The Shilluk (Philadelphia, 1912), p. 90.Google Scholar

^{page 479 note 2} Hofmayr, op. cit. p. 52, cited by Driberg, J. H., ‘The Status of Women Among the Nilotics and Nilo-Hamitics’, in Africa, 5, 1932, pp. 404–21.CrossRef Google Scholar See also Seligman, C. G., ‘The Cult of Nyikang and the Divine Kinship of the Shilluk’, in Fourth Report of the Welcome Tropical Institute (London, 1911), pp. 230–1, and Lienhardt, ‘Nilotic Kings and their Mother's Kin’.Google Scholar

^{page 479 note 3} C. G. and Seligman, B. Z., op. cit. p. 109.Google Scholar

^{page 479 note 4} Jackson, H. C., The Nuer of the Upper Nile Province (Khartoum, 1923), p. 70.Google Scholar

^{page 479 note 5} Lienhardt, R. G., Divinity and Experience: the religion of the Dinka (Oxford, 1961), p. 179.Google Scholar

^{page 479 note 6} Bedri, I. E., ‘Notes on Dink Religious Beliefs in their Chiefs’, in Sudan Notes and Records, 27, 1939, p. 125.Google Scholar

^{page 479 note 7} Evans-Pritchard, E. E., Nuer Religion (Oxford, 1956), p. 31.Google Scholar

^{page 479 note 8} See Lienhardt, Divinity and Experience, passim.

^{page 479 note 9} Ibid. pp. 193–4; Bedri, I. E., ‘Notes on the Padang Dinka’, in Sudan Notes and Records, 29, 1948, pp. 40–57;Google Scholar and Honea, K. H., ‘The Deng Cult and its Connection with the Goddess Aciek among the Dinka’, in Wiener volkerkundle Mitteilungen (Vienna), 2, 1954, pp. 16–20.Google Scholar

^{page 480 note 1} Fergusson, V. H., ‘The Nuong Nuer’, in Sudan Notes and Records, 4, 1921, pp. 146–56.Google Scholar

^{page 480 note 2} An analogous text comes from surprisingly far afield, and appears in a collection of Sri Lankan folktales. ‘In the primitive days, the sky was not so far off from the earth as at present. The sun and moon in their course through the heavens sometimes came in close contact with the house-tops. The stars were stationed so close to the earth that they served as lamps to the houses. There was a servant maid who was repeatedly disturbed by the passing clouds when she was sweeping the compound and this was to her a real nuisance. One cloudy morning, when this naughty girl was sweeping the compound as usual, the clouds came frequently in contact with the broomstick and interfered with her work. Losing all patience, she gave a smart blow to the firmament with the broomstick, saying, “Get away from hence”. The sky, as a matter of course, was quite ashamed at this affront thus offered to it by a servant girl, and flew far away, far out of human reach.’ Parker, H. (ed. and translator), Village Folk Tales of Ceylon (Dehiwala, 1910), p. 42.Google Scholar

^{page 480 note 3} Deng, Francis Mading, The Dinka and Their Songs (Oxford, 1973), pp. 126–8.Google Scholar

^{page 480 note 4} Lienhardt, Divinity and Experience, p. 33.

^{page 480 note 5} Bedri, ‘Notes on the Padang Dinka’, p. 46.

^{page 481 note 1} Burton, God's Ants.

^{page 481 note 2} Zahan, op. cit. pp. 21–2.

^{page 481 note 3} Kenny, loc. cit.

^{page 481 note 4} Burton, Michael and Kirk, Lorraine, ‘Sex Differences in Maasi Cognition of Personality and Social Identity’, in American Anthropologist (Washington, D.C.), 81, 1979, pp. 864–5.Google Scholar

^{page 482 note 1} Cf. Lévi-Strauss, Claude, Structural Anthropology (New York, 1963).Google Scholar

^{page 482 note 2} Burton and Kirk, loc. cit. p. 866.

^{page 482 note 3} Marriage takes on a considerable variety of forms in pastoral Nilotic societies. This discussion primarily concerns the simple legal union that the Atuot have in mind when making general observations on the topic. See Burton, ‘Women and Men in Marriage’; also Evans-Pritchard, Some Aspects of Marriage and the Family Among the Nuer.

^{page 483 note 1} Evans-Pritchard, E. E., ‘An Alternative Term for Brideprice’, in Man (London), 31, 1981, pp. 36–9.Google Scholar

^{page 483 note 2} See Evans-Pritchard, E. E., ‘Social Character of Bridewealth with Special Reference to the Azande’,Google Scholar in ibid. 34, 1934, pp. 172–5; The Nuer (Oxford, 1940); and ‘Nuer Bridewealth’, in Africa, 16, 1946, pp. 247–57.

^{page 483 note 3} Evans-Pritchard, ‘Nuer Bridewealth’, p. 256.

^{page 483 note 4} See Burton, ‘Atuot Age Categories and Marriage’, p. 157.

^{page 484 note 1} See, for example, Evans-Pritchard, E. E., Kinship and Marriage Among the Nuer (Oxford, 1951).Google Scholar

^{page 484 note 2} Lienhardt, R. G., ‘Dinka Representations of the Relations Between the Sexes’, in Schapera, Isaac (ed.), Studies in Kinship and Marriage (London, 1963), p. 79.Google Scholar

^{page 484 note 3} Lienhardt, Divinity and Experience, p. 129.

^{page 484 note 4} Howell, P. P., ‘Some Observations on Divorce Among the Nuer’, in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (London), 83, 1952, pp. 136–46.Google Scholar

^{page 485 note 1} See Burton, ‘Atuot Age Categories and Marriage’.

^{page 486 note 1} Cf. Howell, ‘Some Observations on Divorce Among the Nuer’, p. 14, who writes of the Nuer that ‘a divorce based on a single instance of adultery is extremely rare, and it is only when his wife persists with one man, or several men, or actually elopes with one of them, that a man will seek a divorce’.

^{page 486 note 2} See also Bledsoe, C. H., Women and Marriage in Kpelle Society (Stanford, 1980), p. 3.Google Scholar

^{page 486 note 3} See Deng, Francis Mading, ‘Property and Value-Interplay Among the Nilotes of the Southern Sudan’, in Iowa Law Review (Iowa City), 51, 1966, p. 554.Google Scholar

^{page 487 note 1} Reference here could be made to R. G. Lienhardt where he notes: ‘To keep children ignorant [of the techniques of sexual intercourse] or on the other hand to give them any special instruction in them, would seem equally strange… So are perversions or, as far as I could discover, any great variety of physical technique. I might add here that Atuot men, and the small number of women we felt we could ask, likened homosexuality and cunnilingus to incest: those involved in such acts would die from sin.’ ‘Dinka Representations of the Relations Between the Sexes’, p. 79.

^{page 487 note 2} Evans-Pritchard, E. E., ‘A Note on Courtship Among the Nuer’, in Sudan Notes and Records, 28, 1947, p. 125.Google Scholar

^{page 487 note 3} Buxton, Jean, ‘Girl's Courting Huts in Western Mandari’, in Man, 56, 1963, p. 51.Google Scholar

^{page 488 note 1} Evans-Pritchard, ‘A Note on Courtship Among the Nuer’, p. 124.

^{page 488 note 2} Lienhardt, ‘Dinka Representations of the Relations Between the Sexes’, pp. 81–2.

^{page 488 note 3} Evans-Pritchard, ‘A Note on Courtship Among the Nuer’, p. 126.

^{page 488 note 4} See also Burton, ‘Atuot Age Categories and Marriage’, and ‘Women and Men in Marriage’.

^{page 488 note 5} For those who know of the Dinka first-hand, most would agree that Francis Mading Deng's monograph is laced with indications of male bias. For example, in discussing female possession he argues, ‘While they may not rebel against the system, women have customary ways of making themselves heard which the Dinka do not understand as rebellious, but which are essentially ways of expressing dissent. For instance, women get possessed and, while in a state of trance, voice complaints and demands’; The Dinka of the Sudan (New York, 1972), p. 99.Google Scholar It is just as likely that female possession is associated with spirits that figure as physical maladies - see Burton, J. W., ‘The Village and the Cattle Camp: aspects of Atuot religion’, in Karp, Ivan and Bird, Charles (eds.), Explorations in African Systems of Thought (Bloomington, 1980). At any rate, the simple functionalism of Deng's analysis betrays a more significant issue: women do make public their complaints, with community approval.Google Scholar

^{page 489 note 1} See Brown, Judith K., ‘Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Middle-Aged Women’, in Current Anthropology (Chicago), 23, 2, 1982, pp. 143–8.Google Scholar

^{page 489 note 2} Singer, Alice, ‘Marriage Payments and the Exchange of People’, in Man, 8, 1973, pp. 80–92.CrossRef Google Scholar

^{page 489 note 3} Cf. Leacock, loc. cit. 1972, p. 34: ‘Unfortunately, the debate over women's status in primitive society has largely ignored the actual role of women in primitive society in favor of an almost exclusive focus on descent systems’.Google Scholar

^{page 490 note 1} Cited in Driberg, loc. cit. p. 421.

^{page 490 note 2} Strathern, Marilyn, ‘Culture in a Netbag: the manufacture of a subdiscipline in anthropology’, in Man, N. S. 16, 1981, pp. 665–88.CrossRef Google Scholar

^{page 490 note 3} Milton, Kay, ‘Male Bias in Anthropology?’,Google Scholar in ibid. 14, 1979, pp. 40–56.

^{page 490 note 4} Burton, ‘Atout Age Categories and Marriage’.

^{page 490 note 5} Queeny, E. M., ‘The Dinkas of the Sudan’, in Natural History (New York), 62, 1953, pp. 84–90.Google Scholar

^{page 491 note 1} Cf. Locke, D., ‘Men, Women and Stereotypes’, review of The Sceptical Feminist by Richards, J. R. and Equality and the Rights of WomenGoogle Scholar by Wolgast, E. H., in Times Literary Supplement (London), 26 12 1980, p. 1455.Google Scholar

^{page 491 note 2} Gough, Kathleen, ‘Nuer Kinship: a re-examination’, in Beidelman, T. O. (ed.), The Translation of Culture (London, 1971, p. 118.Google Scholar

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