C. R. Hallpike

Christopher Hallpike 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 and the Tauade of New Guinea.

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". His writing style is to give his readers a "warts and all" perspective of his observations, combined with wit and humour.