COMMENT
Primitive mentality genetically inherited modes of thought that
The most serious issue raised by Wilmsen’s
(2001a) attack on Woodburn and Widlok is
not that personal abuse is academically un-
productive (as Ingold quite rightly says), but
that all the participants in this debate accept
that it is legitimate to criticize anthropologi-
cal doctrines (such as primitive mentality) for
being ‘morally repugnant’ as well as being
‘intellectually indefensible’ (Ingold 2001: 770).
But if a doctrine is based on sound evidence
and argument, then it is true, and no amount
of ‘moral repugnance’ that it may provoke can
have any relevance to this whatsoever. If it
is not based on sound evidence and argu-
ment, then it is untrue and moral condemna-
tion is superfluous. Once moral repugnance is
allowed into academic debate and made intel-
lectually respectable, there will be a strong
temptation to decide the truth or falsity of
doctrines on moralistic rather than on schol-
arly and scientific grounds, because it is very
much easier to give vent to moral indignation
than to weigh evidence, verify references, and
think clearly. This has become increasingly
common in anthropology, where it has been
facilitated by the pseudo-intellectual notion of
‘racism’, which now means little more than
‘any view of any human group that can pos-
sibly be construed as derogatory in some way’,
but which can be dressed up to look seriously
academic by those such as Wilmsen who wish
to suppress discussion of major issues such as
primitive mentality, primitive society, and the
whole topic of social evolution because they
find them politically objectionable in a post-
colonial, multi-cultural age.
One of the techniques used by Wilmsen,
his hero Kuper (1988), and others to prevent
serious discussion of these topics is that of
parody or caricature. Wilmsen’s notion of
‘primitive mentality’, for example, is an aston-
ishing – one might say ‘dishevelled’ – relic of
the antiquated thought-worlds of Lamarck,
Spencer, and Dewey: it apparently consists of
are characteristic of the special economic
conditions of foragers, and these modes of
thought are typified by lack ‘of forethought,
planning, saving, and the like’ (Wilmsen
2001b: 402). Not surprisingly Widlok, who is
actually concerned with the cultural values
of the Hai||om, rejects this absurd version of
primitive mentality as ‘an outmoded notion’
and ‘a dead horse’, but anyone reading the
general discussion of primitive mentality
might well conclude that the whole topic is
now defunct and, in the words of Ingold, is
one of ‘the collective sins of anthropology’s
now-distant past’ (2001: 770).
In 1979 I published a book called The foun-
dations of primitive thought, which has become
very well known and has been translated into
a number of languages. It deals with the topic
of ‘primitive mentality’ at a level which is
considerably more sophisticated than that of
the current debate, but I am quite sure that
anthropologists like Wilmsen feel no obliga-
tion to read it because they can tell without
doing so that it must be wrong as well as
being deeply offensive to all right-thinking
people. Not only does the title contain the
racist word ‘primitive’, but the book itself
has the effrontery to state that the modes of
thought of people living in non-literate, small-
scale societies with simple technologies are
systematically different from that of people
living in complex industrial societies, and,
worse still, that this difference can be eluci-
dated by the use of developmental psychology
and the work of Piaget in particular.
Wilmsen holds up Kuper’s book The inven-
tion of primitive society (1988) to us as a fine
example of the kind of morally responsible
anthropology that we should aspire to pro-
duce. In fact Kuper parodies the idea of prim-
itive society, by assembling a collage of traits
based on the long-discredited speculations of
the nineteenth-century evolutionists. Accord-
ing to him, those who uphold this idea believe
that in primitive society ‘[t]here were no
families in the accepted sense. Women and
572 COMMENT
goods were held communally by the men of
each group. Marriage took the form of regular
exchanges between them. The groups wor-
shipped ancestral spirits’ (1988: 231, and see
Hallpike 1992 for a discussion). Kuper carica-
tures the idea of social evolution in similar
style:
[A]ll human societies … passed through
a series of similar social and cultural
stages … [in which] … everyone lived
in the same way, worshipped the same
gods, married by the same rules, voted
in the same sorts of leader, and obeyed
the same laws. They then experienced
similar revolutionary transformations, in
a set sequence. (1992: 97)
This sort of obscurantism will not make the
topics of social evolution, primitive society, and
primitive mentality go away, however, because
they are real scientific problems and not just
the figments of evil-minded reactionaries. It is
a pity that Kuper, Wilmsen, and the many other
anthropologists who would like our research
to be dictated by a political agenda still cannot
accept, despite all the lessons of the twentieth
century, that such a project is inherently self-
defeating. If they wish to promote justice,
liberate the oppressed, and eradicate world
poverty, by all means let them try to do so, but
let them not confuse these laudable aims with
the Science of Man.
C.R. Hallpike
McMaster University
Hallpike, C.R. 1979. The foundations of primi-
tive thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
——— 1992. Is there a primitive society?
Cambridge Anthropology 16: 1, 29-44.
Ingold, T. 2001. Reply. Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 7, 770.
Kuper, A. 1988. The invention of primitive
society: the transformations of an illusion.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
——— 1992. Against primitive society: a
rejoinder to Hallpike. Cambridge Anthropol-
ogy 16: 1, 95-8.
Wilmsen, E.N. 2001a. Primitive mentality.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 7
(N.S.), 768-9.
——— 2001b. Review of Widlok’s Living on
mangetti. Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute (N.S.) 7, 401-2.
Reply to Hallpike
Hallpike underscores my point admirably,
drawing attention to the urgent need to
counter his position. He is perhaps the most
strident current proponent of the existence of
‘primitive mentality’, dogmatically elevating it
to the level of ‘anthropological doctrine’ to be
taken unquestioningly on faith. To him, such
a mentality is found not alone among peoples
of the distant past but also among many with
us today. Moreover, he has declared his con-
viction that ‘the denial of social evolution, and
even the very concept of “primitive society”,
must in the end deprive social anthropology
of any distinctive subject of study at all’ (1986:
13).
Although he denies that his ideas descend
from Lamarck, Spencer, et alii, Hallpike con-
cludes: ‘There seems little doubt that specific
aspects of social organization and of culture
in general can be shown to have stage-like
properties’ (1986: 375). He then lists the classic
attributes amenable to evolutionary stage
attainment formulated by these nineteenth-
century theorists, including (citing himself,
1979) thought. Only a few managed all the
rungs on the ladder; Indo-Europeans climbed
up all the way, China not so far or well. Most
chose paths leading to the evolution of con-
servative cultures that would maintain their
basic societal-subsistence-level status quo
rather than take more risky economic strate-
gies involving competition. This is the ‘prim-
itive thought’ confining ‘primitive society’ that
Hallpike finds deficient; the rise of the state
rescued Europeans from a similar fate. This is
Hallpike’s ‘Science of Man’ – writ large in his
own capitalization. Unpalatably, I am, contrary
to his assumption, familiar with his work, and
cite its defects in forthcoming articles, urging
that a meaningful Kalahari debate can be part
of an effort to erase the primitive stain from
anthropological and popular thought, not by
forgoing science but by practising it with
critical diligence.
Edwin N. Wilmsen
University of Texas, Austin
Hallpike, C.R. 1979. The foundations of primi-
tive thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
——— 1986 The principles of social evolution.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.