Biography

Christopher Hallpike is Emeritus Professor for Anthropology at McMaster University in Canada. His principal interests are in social and cultural evolution and cognitive development, and he has conducted fieldwork in Papua New Guinea and Ethiopia.

His books, The Foundations of Primitive Thought (1979) and The Principles of Social Evolution (1986), are both well known. He has recently completed The Evolution of Moral Understanding, which is available from the Prometheus Research Group.

Professor Hallpike can be contacted here.

 

Selected publications

Books

 

2004

The Evolution of Moral Understanding. Prometheus Research Group: www.prometheus.org.uk

1986

The Principles of Social Evolution. 412 pp. Oxford: Clarendon Press. (1988 – paperback edition).

1979

The Foundations of Primitive Thought. 516 pp. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Also translations into German, Italian, and Spanish.

1977

Bloodshed and Vengeance in the Papuan Mountains. The generation of conflict in Tauade society. 317 pp. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

1972

The Konso of Ethiopia. A study of the values of a Cushitic people. 342 pp. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Revised edition 440 pp. in press (Addis Ababa University Press).

Edited

 

1979

The Kukukuku of the Upper Watut. Edited from the published and unpublished fieldnotes of the late Beatrice Blackwood. 202 pp. Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum.

Articles

 

2000

‘Moralphilosophie und die historische Entwicklung des moralische verstehen’, in Anthropologie und Moral. Philosophische und soziologische perspektiven. M. Endress & N. Roughley (eds), 359-93. Wurzburg: Verlag Konigshausen & Neumann.

1998

‘Time reckoning and calendars’,  The Encyclopaedia of Sub-Saharan Africa. J. Middleton (ed), IV, 239-43. New York: Harper-Collins

1997

‘Social evolution’, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 152(4), 682-9

1994

‘Kognitive Entwicklung in Kultur und Individuum’, in Der Prozess der Geistesgeschichte. G. Dux & U. Wenzel (eds), 225-47. Suhrkamp Verlag

1992

‘Is there a primitive society?’, Cambridge Anthropology, 16, 29-44

1985

‘Social and biological evolution I: Darwinism and social evolution’, Journal of Social and Biological Structures, 8, 5-31

1984

‘The relevance of the concept of inclusive fitness to human society’, Journal of Social and Biological Structures, 7, 131-44

1976

‘Is there a primitive mentality?’, Man (n.s.), 11, 253-70

1973

‘Functionalist interpretations of primitive warfare’, Man (n.s.), 4, 51-70

1971

‘Some problems in cross-cultural comparison’, in The Translation of Culture: Essays presented to E.E. Evans-Pritchard. T.O. Beidelman (ed.), 123-40. London: Tavistock

1970

‘The principles of alliance formation between Konso towns’, Man (n.s.) 5, 258-80

1969

‘Social hair’, Man (n.s.) 4, 256-64.
Revised version (1978) in The Social Aspects of the Human Body. T. Polhemus (ed.), 134-46. London: Penguin

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