Christopher Robert Hallpike

Christopher Robert Hallpike (born 1938) is an English-Canadian anthropologist and an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at McMaster University, Ontario, Canada. He is known for his extensive study of the Konso of Ethiopia[2][3] and Tauade of New Guinea.

Christopher Robert Hallpike
Born1938 (age 82–83)
EducationUniversity of Oxford (BLitt, MA, PhD, D.Litt)[1]
Scientific career
Institutions

Early life and education

Hallpike was educated at Clifton College, and The Queen's College, Oxford, where he read PPE. After graduation he studied at the Institute of Social Anthropology, Oxford, under E. E. Evans-Pritchard and Rodney Needham. Fieldwork among the Konso in Ethiopia 1965–1967 was followed by a D.Phil. in 1968.

Career

After graduation, Hallpike was appointed a postdoctoral fellow at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, and in 1970–1972 carried out fieldwork among the Tauade of Papua New Guinea. He returned to Dalhousie as a research associate in 1972–1973, and after four years in England as a private researcher, in 1978 was appointed professor of anthropology at McMaster University, Ontario, until retiring in 1998 as professor emeritus. He became a Canadian citizen in 1982. Hallpike was a Bye Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge, in 1984–1985, 1988–1989, and 1992, and was awarded a D.Litt. by Oxford University in 1989.

Research

Hallpike has researched and published on a wide range of subjects, including Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea; stateless societies; tribal warfare; systems of seniority based on age; the symbolism of hair style;[4] sociocultural evolution; cultural materialism; Piaget, developmental psychology and primitive thought;[5][6] the evolution of morality;[7] the relevance of Darwinism and sociobiology in anthropology (especially the weaknesses of adaptationism); and the history of science. His photographs of 1960s Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea have recently been added to the Pitt Rivers Museum online photographic collection.

Hallpike is critical of "journalists, science writers, historians, linguists, biologists, and especially evolutionary psychologists" who write about primitive societies with ignorance or even ideologically driven falsifications espousing theories that are "nonsense".[8] Thus, in his book Ship of Fools he evaluates critically the scientific merit – or the lack of it – of theories presented by Emma Byrne about swearing, Yuval Harari about human history, Rene Girard about mimetic causation of violence, William Arens about his denial of human cannibalism, and Noam Chomsky about universal grammar in language acquisition.

Publications
  • The Konso of Ethiopia (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1972)[9]
  • Bloodshed and Vengeance in the Papuan Mountains (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977)[10]
  • The Foundations of Primitive Thought (1979)[11][12][13][14]
  • The Principles of Social Evolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986)
  • The Evolution of Moral Understanding (Prometheus Research Group, 2004).
  • How We Got Here: from bows and arrows to the space age (AuthorHouse UK, 2008)
  • On Primitive Society, and Other Forbidden Topics (Bloomington,Indiana: AuthorHouse, 2011)
  • Do We Need God to Be Good? (Kouvola, Finland: Castalia House, 2016)[15]
  • Ethical Thought in Increasingly Complex Societies (Lexington Books, 2017)
  • Ship of Fools: An anthology of learned nonsense about primitive society (Castalia House, 2018)

References
  1. "Hallpike Christopher, Professor Emeritus — Faculty of Social Sciences". McMaster.
  2. "Homosexuality in Subsharan Africa(Ethiopia Excerpt)".Scribd
  3. Donald N. Levine (1 May 2000). Greater Ethiopia: The Evolution of a Multiethnic Society. University of Chicago Press. pp. 170–. ISBN 978-0-226-47561-5.
  4. Philip A KUHN; Philip A Kuhn (30 June 2009). Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768. Harvard University Press. pp. 243–. ISBN 978-0-674-03977-3.
  5. Francis La Flesche (1 March 1999). The Osage and the Invisible World: From the Works of Francis la Flesche. University of Oklahoma Press. pp. 11–. ISBN 978-0-8061-3132-0.
  6. Anthropological Society of Oxford (1980). Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford. Oxford University Anthropological Society.
  7. "Book Review: The Evolution of Moral Understanding" Winther, Rasmus Grønfeldt; McManus, Fabrizzio Guerrero. Evolution, Volume 68 (3) – Mar 1, 2014
  8. C.R.Hallpike (2018). Ship of Fools: An anthology of learned nonsense about primitive society. Castalia House. p. Preface.
  9. Thomas P. Ofcansky; David H. Shinn (29 March 2004). Historical Dictionary of Ethiopia. Scarecrow Press. pp. 243–. ISBN 978-0-8108-6566-2.
  10. Michael Horace Barnes Professor of Religious Studies and Alumni Chair in Humanities University of Dayton (28 April 2000). Stages of Thought : The Co-Evolution of Religious Thought and Science: The Co-Evolution of Religious Thought and Science. Oxford University Press. pp. 252–. ISBN 978-0-19-535083-8.
  11. "Books". The New York Times
  12. Walter Houston (1 February 1993). Purity and Monotheism: Clean and Unclean Animals in Biblical Law. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 19–. ISBN 978-0-567-07190-3.
  13. Bernard S. Jackson (1 November 2000). Studies in the Semiotics of Biblical Law. A&C Black. pp. 37–. ISBN 978-1-84127-150-7.
  14. Georg Oesterdiekhoff (January 2011). The Steps of Man Towards Civilization: The Key to Disclose the Riddle of History. BoD – Books on Demand. pp. 18–. ISBN 978-3-8423-4288-0.
  15. http://www.castaliahouse.com/downloads/do-we-need-god-to-be-good/
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