‘Dangerous to eat’: rethinking pollution states among the Nuer of Sudan

This article offers a novel interpretation of a highly complex and deadly form of pollution ( nueer ) that powerfully shapes contemporary social relations among the Nuer of Sudan. Through a careful examination of the myriad events thought to trigger off the condition nueer , the author challenges earlier attempts by Evans-Pritchard to interpret this condition via Judaeo-Christian notions of ‘sin’. It is argued that nueer is better understood as a pollution concept that distinguishes—via the notion ‘dangerous to eat’ —blood flows that are culturally denned as negative, death-ridden and anomalous from others deemed to be properly mediated, positive and life-promoting. As a powerful force governing the social circulation of blood and food, nueer helps to ground these more abstract distinctions in the immediacies of bodily experience, thereby lending them greater significance and intensity.