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;
sociocultural evolution;
cultural materialism;
Piaget,
developmental psychology and primitive thought; the
evolution of morality; the relevance of
Darwinism and
sociobiology in anthropology (especially the weaknesses of
adaptationism); and the
history of science. 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". Thus, in his book
Ship of Fools he is critical of the 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) •
Bloodshed and Vengeance in the Papuan Mountains (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977) •
The Foundations of Primitive Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979) •
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) •
Ethical Thought in Increasingly Complex Societies (Lexington Books, 2017) •
Ship of Fools: An anthology of learned nonsense about primitive society (Castalia House, 2018) •
Darwinism, Dogma, and Cultural Evolution (Castalia House, May 2020) •
On The Wilder Shores Of Life: Living With Primitive Tribes (Ellie White, 2021) •
Savagery and Civilisation (Ellie White, 2022)
Fiction Two satirical novels under the pen name of “Owen Stanley" •
The Missionaries (Castalia House. 2016) •
The Promethean (Castalia House. 2017) == References ==