Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan (1902-1973)

English social anthropologist. His studies, in the 1920s and 1930s, of the Azande and the Nuer peoples of the southern Sudan were attempts to understand both how a tribal society was organized and the way in which its people thought. Knighted 1971.

Evans-Pritchard was professor at Oxford 1946-70. He regarded social anthropology as more of an art, like history, than a science.

His works include Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande 1937, marked by the elegance and clarity of his prose style.