1) Among the Nuer people of Sudan, cattle, blood, and food are the key media through which social bonds and power relations are constructed. 2) Cattle represent power and prestige for men, who hold ownership over them. The exchange of cattle reinforces male bonds and resolves conflicts. 3) Blood symbolizes both life and kinship ties. Men's bonds through bloodshed in initiation rites are considered superior to the bonds of women through childbirth. 4) While women control food and domestic life, their association with blood is seen as polluting. This relegates them to a subordinate social position compared to men's dominance through cattle ownership.

1. Anthropology 121
CATTLE OVER BLOOD

2. Blood, Cattle & Food: A Paradigm of
Gender Relations
Nuer men and women use cattle in order to
empower bonds of kinship.
Cattle, Hutchinson argues are the dominant
medium through which people render the
importance of human blood connections.

3. Cattle, Blood & Food
Cattle, blood, and food are the ―three key
media of interpersonal bonding‖ among the
Nuer people. Each has the capacity to
transform from one medium into another (by
way of exchange) and embedded in these
transformations are struggles for power.
Transformations from one media to another
causes a shift from one social domain to
another: men were associated with cattle and
blood, women with blood and food

4. Interdependencies
The self-identification of people
with cattle testifies to the
interdependency that exists
between the two: cattle depend
on their Nuer herders for
biological existence, and the
Nuer depend on the cattle
largely for social existence.

5. Cattle define Human Existence
Cattle allow Nuer to ―transcend some of the
profoundest human frailties‖ (Hutchinson
1998: 60).
They provide immortality through lineage
(thus overcoming death), purification through
ritual (overcoming pollution), and the
redefinition of social roles and powers through
ownership and exchange (overcoming
impediments to social status)

6. Social Capital
The primary means of exchange among the
Nuer, cattle represent vessels of not only
power, but of social prestige and influence.
The social significance of cattle is a
consequence of their versatility – the ability to
employ them to interpret various social
conditions.

7. Social Capital
Hutchinson notes that ―cattle were...the
conflict resolvers par excellence‖.
The Nuer are a patriarchal society—men hold
claim and ownership over the most salient
symbol of power in the society: cattle.
―Male corporate solidarity and continuity
were, indeed, founded on this principle of
‗communal fertility‘ through shared cattle
rights. Hence, cattle were in a very real sense
the currency of power among men‖.

8. Blood
―Without the blood of
the cow, there would
be nothing moving in
Nuer society...If I
were alone without
the cow, I would not
build new
relationships. What
this means is
that, without the
cow, I would not be
worth much‖

9. Blood
Blood represents not only the ―vital force‖ that
suffused everything in the Nuer universe, but
also the boundaries of kinship.
Blood symbolically serves to create
relationships, but it also serves to segregate
certain form of human-human relationships
from others: the blood that binds men to cattle
is also the same blood that binds woman to
child.

10. Blood Bonds
Men‘s blood bond is considered ‗superior‘ to the
woman‘s blood bond.
An integral aspect of this superiority was the
blood-bond of men in ―the shedding of blood at
initiation forged a brotherhood among age-
mates‖ during initiation.
This bond created an association with cattle
wrought by the change in status from boy to
man—he was now able to participate fully in
Nuer power relations among other men through
cattle claims, ownership, and exchange.

11. Cattle over Blood
―To become a man was thus to embrace the
entire complex of cultural practices and
principles upholding the cultural ―truth‖ that
human blood is effectively manipulable
through cattle exchange and sacrifice‖

12. Food
―Food binds people together‖ is a common
Nuer saying.
When we talk about food, Hutchinson is
referring to grain: Sorghum, maize, and
products such as beer.
Women, already established to have a link to
children through birth and breastfeeding, held
power primarily in the domestic sphere and
thus controlled food, which soon became a
counterbalance (or, at least, the attempt at
such) for the power of men with their cattl.

13. Polluting Blood
Food gives sustenance and vitality to Blood.
But this relationship ultimately works against
women.
Even though women cultivate the blood-bonds
of men through their control of food and
therefore, an aspect of vitality, the blood of
women was considered to be polluting and
dangerous to the virility of both cattle and

14. Blood and Food
Womens control of food acts a reminder of
human (Nuer) vitality and vulnerability.
Women thus only enjoyed the status of food-
bearers and the minimal power conferred by
such to the extent that their association with food
revolved around the importance of blood.
However, this positive aspect of connection with
strength and vitality is tempered by the negative
associations of blood with women, thus
relegating them once again to a position beneath
the the collective male power of cattle and blood-
bonds.

15. Human blood flows
Food, like cattle, cannot be separated from its
associations with blood.
The interdependency of the three is integral to the
interplay of power in Nuer society that shifts from one
transformation to the other, but that always leads back
to the male power:
―The perpetual superimposition of ‗cattle flows‘ over
‗human blood flows‘ continued to reinforce the
dominant social position of senior, cattle-wealthy men
at the same time as it reduced possibilities of
autonomy for women and other household members‖.

16. Guns, War and Blood
Guns removed responsibility and the aspect of blood from a killing.
Complications arose when ‗bloodwealth‘ (in the form of cattle) were
to be paid, since killing using a gun upset the direct relationship of
blood to cattle and vice versa
The weakening of this relationship thus weakened male power
overall since their superior blood-bonds could no longer manifest in
the social capital of cattle.
Symbolic consequences:
Increased use and value of guns = decrease in certain kinds of
blood-bonds, age-set linkages and cattle oriented social capital.
Non ‗traditional‘ form of masculinity emerging: Thugs, gun
crime, rogue militias.