dash; no ritual is complete without the symbolic or actual sacrifice of one of the herd. Cattle also play a part in the kinship system used by the Nuer.
             Kinship is defined by Chodkiewicz (1998, Oct. 9) as the ideology of domestic life. Kinship systems are formed by sets of rules concerning four areas. Descent concerns all the rules of inheritance in group membership, name, property or status. Affinity deals with all the rules defiing which kind of marriage is forbidden, permitted or perferred. Residence rules dictate where new spouses wil live, and kinship terminology are the named for the categories of relatives which are recognized by a society. It is these four areas of Nuer society that will form the primary focus of this paper, however other areas influence kinship and will be dealt with as they arise.
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