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Atuot ethnicity: an aspect of Nilotic ethnology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

John W. Burton
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Extract

Evans-Pritchard's assessment of what contemporary social anthropologists might call ‘contextual ethnicity’ has offered many with no first-hand research experience in this region of Africa a prerogative in which some apparently revel: to opine on the bizarre and the obvious. Examples of the former persuasion are typified by articles which, with a passion for ‘theoretical purity’, openly declare an indifference to ethnographic fact (Newcomer 1972). Others attempt to account for the present distribution of pastoral Nilotes in the Southern Sudan as though ‘tribal’ groups and their tract of migration possessed the physical properties of pool balls pelleted across the swampland of the Upper Nile Basin (e.g. Southall 1976). Some must surely have had moment to wonder if the Nuer really exist at all. Of course they do, as even the uninterested tourist could note by observing the ethnic composition of labour groups in Khartoum, but only because so do the Dinka, who live north, south and west of Nuerland.

Résumé

La vraie identité des Atuot: un cas d'ethnologie nilotique

La peuplade du nom d'Atuot a été vaguement mentionnee dans les ouvrages où il y est fait référence. Avant les propres recherches de l'auteur, aucun observateur spécialisé n'a vécu parmi eux afin d'effectuer une enquête d'anthropologie sociale: c'est pour cette raison qu'ils ont souvent été classés à tort comme groupe Dinka ou Nuer. Le présent article examine brièvement un corpus limité de données historiques et ethnologiques en vue de mieux cerner la véritable identité Atuot. La conclusion s'efforce d'évaluer l'intérêt de ce sujet pour les études nilotiques.

Type
Outsiders: ethnic stereotypes
Information
Africa , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , January 1981 , pp. 496 - 507
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1981

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