ANTH1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Enculturation, Nudity, Bride Price
8 May 2018
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Week 4: LIVELIHOOD, ENVIRONMENT AND VALUE (2): Nuer Integration
• Reviewing Definition:
o The syoli: Kottak forulates this as "soethig… That oes to stad for soethig
else". How have we extended this definition?
o The material: Kottak discusses this as the relationship between culture and nature and
the role of culture in transforming nature and the limits on that, how have we extended
on that
• Ethnocentrism and Ethnographic Films:
o What is ethnocentrism?
o The visual impact of different ways of embracing culture
o Nudity as everyday
o Sacrificing and tattooing as enculturation
o Everyday use of cattle dung
• Cattle as wealth:
o Payment of some 20-25 cattle from the grooms family to the brides family on marriage
o The equation of cattle as wealth and female fertility
o Cattle legitimate the name and descent of the children of the marriage
o Payment of bridewealth makes a man a potential ancestor
o Bridewealth is the foundation of a Nuer version of patriarchy
o Bridewealth creates connections between kinship groups and villages
• Cattle as Symbol
o Cattle are
• A source of life
• A connection to God
• A form of wealth and
• Cattle reproduce like humans
• In making the connection between these meanings, livelihood relationships and
economic relationships, cattle become a symbol.
• Cattle and 3 systems of Integration:
o Cattle as a master symbol - system of meaning
o Cattle as livelihood - a system of ecological relationships
o Cattle as value - a system of social relationships
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