Polygamy In The Nuer Tribe Analysis

With regards to the moral stance of monogamy, homicide, theft etc, we are very much divided again. Within the Nuer tribe, who follow the spiritual essence of the totem, polygamy is very much accepted, often identified as natural. Whereas, within more traditional religious cultures, it is thought of as sinful and intrinsically wrong. Additionally, many societies would see the killing of another human being as inherently wrong, something which could be ascribed as an absolute universal truth. However, the Nuer see things differently, and often homicide is used as a form of social control, with the payment of cattle as a mode of mediation. It is only wrong to kill members of your own tribe, and the view of theft varies, depending on clan’s social ties. And so moral obligations vary, depending on social context.

Ritual may be used by the minority, a small elite, in order to take control over society. Therefore, when different powers occupy …show more content…
We are exposed to so much information and dependent on sharing this with those around us, and so the risk of lying becomes more prominent and therefore, the feeling of doubt, preceding to epistemic vigilance. It becomes difficult for anthropologists to have a rounded perspective of things via close observation. We may shy away from telling the truth, due to the worry of how we may come across, or what will be documented about ourselves. Likewise, the questions asked may be rather abstract, resulting in a vague answer. Consequently, ethnographic data is often flawed and inefficient, with the answers they acquire being motivated by the framing of the experiment and other uncontrolled variables, making it difficult to attain a scientific rigor, due to experimental bias, placebo effect, demand characteristics and confounding variables. But all in all, it is clear that a specific change in environment, leads to a change in conception, even if this is a little