A Note on the Nuer

Abstract

Bioethicists know that classic cases and stories can stick in our minds and assume a life of their own. They are remembered in part because may exemplify moral principles, dilemmas, or simply oddities of moral experience. Does it matter that be factually true? The question got stuck in my mind when, looking into another topic (what Jeffrey Blustein passingly refers to as moral principles[1]), remembered reading about Nuer. The Nuer, of southern Sudan, are described by Stanley Hauerwas as a good and gentle people, who have a strong sense of communal care for one another. However, there is this oddity: they have view that any of their children born obviously retarded or deformed is not a Nuer. Instead, think such a child is a hippopotamus. An elaborate mythology, in which various kinds of animals have their place and responsibilities, underwrites this belief. The Nuer do not have a well-defined concept of 'human being' or 'animal,' but ... feel strongly that each type of creature is best cared for by its own kind. Therefore a deformed child is placed in river to be cared for by its own--namely hippopotami. From our perspective this is child euthanasia, but Nuer feel are doing only thing can do if are to act responsibly. For them a 'quandary' would be raised if mother of such a child decided she was so attached to this 'hippopotamus' that she wanted to keep it.[2] Hauerwas's source is Purity and Danger by anthropologist Mary Douglas. She writes little about Nuer here but does tell us that the Nuer treat monstrous births as baby hippopotamuses, accidentally born to humans and, with this labelling, appropriate action is clear. They lay them in river where belong.[3] The context for Hauerwas's comment is, among other things, abortion debate; he wants to provoke us into examining narratives that make us the kind of people we are. The context for Douglas's comment is to illustrate how cultures might interpret things which, given their world views, are anomalous. What to us, apparently, is drowning, infanticide, or euthanasia is to Nuer returning of like to like. The original account behind this story, by anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Douglas's only cited source, is strikingly different. E-P's context was how mythological twin births figure in Nuer explanations of their totems and how contemporary twin births are sometimes interpreted. He explains: I had not been long in Nuerland [1930] when one morning my Nuer servant Nhial came in some excitement to tell me that a woman of his village, where we were staying, had given birth to a hippopotamus and a male child, both dead. It was too late to see what happened, but was told that hippopotamus had been placed in a nearby stream and child, being a twin and therefore in Nuer eyes a sort of bird, had been placed in a tree.... The reason given for this particular twin-birth was that woman's husband had killed several hippopotamuses and had revenged themselves on him by stamping their likeness on one of twins. . . .[4] Let us note well: Both twins were still-born, none was gently drowned as Douglas implies and Hauerwas infers; infant was buried in stream, not drowned there. …