Through the pioneering efforts of the famed British anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard, the Nuer of southern Sudan have become one of anthropology's most celebrated case studies. Now Sharon Hutchinson combines fresh ethnographic evidence and contemporary theoretical perspectives to show not only what has happened to the Nuer since their 1930s encounters with Evans-Pritchard, but, more importantly, what is to be gained from a thoroughly historicized treatment of ethnographic materials. Hutchinson's work provides a vision for what anthropology has become in the 1990s.

Concentrating on Nuer perceptions, experiences, and evaluations of change, Hutchinson traces the historical conditions that have led contemporary men and women to reconsider fundamental aspects of their lives. She raises a number of important issues that Evans-Pritchard did not: How can we move beyond static structural models based on notions of cultural "boundedness," "homogeneity," and "order"? How have Nuer people been actively reshaping and reassessing local forms of power in light of dramatic economic shifts, religious proselytizing, civil war, and colonial and postcolonial rule?

Hutchinson has produced a rich ethnographic document that offers a new rhetorical strategy for writing ethnographies that is processual, dialogical, and reflexive all at once.

Sharon E. Hutchinson is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

“Remarkable. Nuer Dilemmas shows in intriguing detail how their communities have both resisted and incorporated the fractured modernity of a malformed state. . . . . One of the many engaging aspects of [this book] is the sense [Hutchinson] gives of the process of field research, of the technique anthropologists call 'participant observation,' which consists in large part of the art of conversation. There is a vivid sense of her interaction with thinking, talking, joking Nuer men and women, engaged in constant debate, like other people in the world, about the meaning of the new things in their lives—guns and money, state power, literacy and the changing relations between the sexes. . . . The research on which this book is based is an achievement in itself. Nuerland is a harsh place to live even in peacetime. To survive is noteworthy. To produce a book like this, an outstanding contribution to the already remarkable scholarly literature on the peoples of Southern Sudan, is a triumph. Lucky is the outsider who has the chance to live among the Nuer. But lucky also the Nuer, to have such outsiders live with them.”—John Ryle, Times Literary Supplement

“This is a remarkable book, a book that makes innovative contributions both informational and methodological. . . . A spectacular tour de force. Not only is Hutchinson dealing with many different time periods, many different types of evidence, and many inevitable gaps, but the populations among which she worked had been radically disrupted by the first civil war (1955–72) and later by the resumption of the civil war (1983). . . . This fine, gracefully written, richly informative book has given us such a wealth of new knowledge. . . . The boldness with which this book carves out its intellectual territory is impressive. And the sense it conveys of the brave and lively individuals who people its pages is nothing short of remarkable. Hutchinson has given us what is in both the historical and emotional sense, a moving ethnography.”—Sally Falkmoore, American Ethnographer

“Hutchinson, a contemporary anthropologist alert to the chronological dimension of human experience, has traced with care how institutions central to the society of the Nuer have changed between their encounter with Evans-Pritchard in the early 1930s and her own fieldwork in the early 1980s. . . . [An] exemplary work of social history.”—American Historical Review

"Not just a brilliant restudy of one of anthropology's most famous 'peoples' but an exemplary historical ethnography that will be a landmark in the discipline. . . . With extraordinary sensitivity Hutchinson reveals how the Nuer have confronted the most profound moral, social, and political dilemmas of their—and our—changing world."—Lila Abu-Lughod, author of Writing Women's Worlds

Amaury Talbot Prize 1997, The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland