The Nuer people live in South Sudan, mostly around the Greater Upper Nile. They are largely semi-nomadic cattle headers. It was the Nuer people that the British anthropologist Edward Evans-Pritchard (b1902-d1973) chose to study with a trilogy of seminal books published in 1940s. Anthropology is useful, it enables us to see ourselves through the lens of others in a way that we can’t quite glimpse directly. Gillian Tett (Gillian, 2021) quotes the anthropologist Horace Milner as saying that it is ‘alone amongst the sciences it strives to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange (p5).’ Back to the Nuer. The contemporary anthropologist Arlie Russell Hochschild quotes Pritchard as being fascinated that the Nuer could remember ancestors going back eleven generations – but only the men. When it came to women it was almost as if they did not exist. Pritchard called this Structural Amnesia as it reflected the power structures of the kin system which was an indirect expression of power that privileged men but not women. But the Nuer were blind to this. Hochschild uses Pritchard’s insights of Structural Amnesia to explain why some people in the deep red US Republican state of Louisiana (Hochschild, 2016) feel justifiably hurt by the destruction of their much loved environment from industrial pollution yet are blind industry’s culpability. She then meticulously plots the narrative and the power structures at play that create this social amnesia. These are two examples of Structural Amnesia, but they are all around us, yet we hardly notice them.
Here is something that you can try. Get a group together with different experiences and roles, hopefully including someone who is new to the organization, and be your anthropological team and investigate:
At a surface level: What knowledge is taken seriously, for example numbers over words, words over numbers, spoken word, written knowledge, tacit knowing, one topic over another, the weight one department has over another, the influence of different stakeholders, and so on.
At a deeper level: What does this say about who or what has the power.
- Within the organization what groupings and departments hold sway, and how is this reflected in the layout, structures, and even furnishings that you see. How is this power exercised – at meetings, e-mails, side conversations, who is included and who is excluded.
- Beyond the organizations who are the stakeholders that hold the power and who does not (in healthcare those with learning difficulties are the ones that have less voice and power and have the poorest outcomes – this matters). This can include individuals, groups, and even regulators and government bodies.
Choices for change: Power structures grow and creep over time. These can result in unfair allocation of resources and outcomes for people and poor decision-making or organizations. The question is: by raising these questions and inviting conversations what might change? In other words, how we can work together to imagine and take practical steps to make improvements for people and organizations?
Gillian, T. (2021). AntroVision – How Anthropology Can Explain Business and Life. Randon Hose.
Hochschild, A. (2016). Strangers in Their Own Land. The New Press.
Metis 