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In this chapter we look backwards on our description of Nuer interest in cattle and of their ecology and forwards to an account of their political structure. Their ecology limits and in other ways influences their social relations, but the value given to ecological relations is equally significant in understanding the social system, which is a system within the ecological system, partly dependent on it and partly existing in its own right.
Ultimately most, perhaps all, concepts of time and space are determined by the physical ambient, but the value they embody are only one of many possible responses to it and depend also on structural principles, which belong to a different order of reality. In this book we are not describing Nuer cosmology buttheir political and other institutions, and are, therefore, interested mainly in the influence of ecological relations on these institutions rather than the influence of the social structure on the conceptualization of the ecological relations. Thus, to give one example, we do not describe how Nuer classify birds into various lineages on the pattern of their lineage structure. This chapter is therefore a bridge between the two parts of the book, but we cross it in one direction only. In describing Nuer concepts of time we may distinguish between those that are mainly reflections of their relations to environment, which we call ecological time, and those that are reflections of their relations to one another in the social structure, which we call structural time.

Both refer to successions of events which are of sufficient interest to the community for them to be noted and related to each other conceptually. The larger periods of time are almost entirely structural, because the events they relate are changes in the relationship of social groups. Moreover, time-reckoning based on changes in nature and man's response to them is limited to an annual cycle and therefore cannot be used to differentiate longer periods than seasons. Both, also, have limited and fixed notations. Seasonal and lunar changes repeat themselves year after year, so that a Nuer standing at any point of time has conceptual knowledge of what lies before him and can predict and organize his life accordingly. A man's structural future is likewise already fixed and ordered into different periods, so that the total changes in status a boy will undergo in his ordained passage through the social system, if he lives long enough, canbe foreseen. Structural time appears to an individual passing through the social system to be entirely progressive, but, as we shall see, in a sense this is an illusion. Ecological time appears to be, and is, cyclical. The ecological cycle is a year. Its distinctive rhythm is the backwards and forwards movement from villages to -camps, which is the Nuer's response to the climatic dichotomy of rains and drought. The year (ruon) has two main seasons, lot and mai. Tot, from about the middle of March to the middle of September, roughly corresponds to the rise in the curve of rainfall, though it does not cover the whole period of the rains. Rain may fall heavily at the end of September and in early October, and the country is still flooded in these months which belong, nevertheless, to the mai half of the year, for it commences at the decline of the rains-not at their cessation-and roughly covers the trough of the curve, from about the middle of September to the middle of March. The two seasons therefore only approximate to our division into rains and drought, and the Nuer classification aptly summarizes their way of looking at the movement of time, the direction of attention in marginal months being as significant as the actual climatic conditions. In the middle of. September Nuer turn, as it were, towards the life of fishing and cattle camps and feel that village residence and horticulture lie behind them. They begin to speak of camps as though they were already in being, and long to be on the move. This restlessness is even more marked towards the end of the drought when, noting cloudy skies, people turn towards the life of villages and make preparations for striking camp. Marginal months may therefore be classed as tot or mai, since they belong to one set of activities but presage the other set, for the concept of seasons is derived from social activities rather than from the climatic changes which determine them, and a year is to Nuer a period of village residence (cieng) and a period of camp residence (wec).I have already noted the significant physical changes associated with rains and drought, and some of these have been presented in charts on PP. 52 and 53. 1 have also described, in the last chapter, the ecological movement that follows these physical changes where it affects human life to any degree. Seasonal variations in social activities, on which Nuer concepts of time are primarily based, have also been indicated and, on the economic side, recorded at some length. The main features of these three planes of rhythm, physical, ecological, and social, are charted on the opposite page.

The movements of the heavenly bodies other than the sun and the moon, the direction and variation of winds, and the migration of some species of birds are observed by the Nuer, but they do not regulate their activities in relation to them nor use them as points of reference in seasonal time-reckoning. The curators by which seasons are most clearly defined are those which control the movements of the people: water, vegetation, movements of fish, &c.; it being the needs of the cattle and variations in, food-supply which chiefly translate ecological rhythm into the social rhythm of the.year, and the contrast between modes of life at the height of the rains and at the height of the drought which provides the conceptual poles in time-reckoning. Besides these two main seasons of tot and mai Nuer recognize two subsidiary seasons included in them, being transitional periods between them. The four seasons are not sharp divisions but overlap. Just as we reckon summer and winter as the halves of our year and speak also of spring and autumn, so Nuer reckon tot and mai as halves of their year and speak also of the seaons of rwil and jiom. Rwil is the time of moving from camp to village and of clearing and planting, from about the middle of March to the middle of June, before the rains have reached their peak. It counts as part of the tot half of the year, though it is contrasted with tot proper, the period of full village life and horticulture, from about the middle of June to the middle of September. jiom, meaning 'wind', is the period in which the persistent north wind begins to blow and people harvest, fish May June July August September October November December January February March April.