Ethical Thought in Increasingly Complex Societies: Social Structure and Moral Development combines insights of developmental psychology and cultural anthropology to examine the development of moral thinking. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of small-scale communities of hunter-gatherers and farmers in Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea, C.R. Hallpike studies the means by which individual thinking interacts with complex social factors to produce moral ideas and the effects of worldview on ethical systems. This book is recommended for scholars of psychology, anthropology, and philosophy.

Ethical Thought in Increasingly Complex Societies: Social Structure and Moral Development combines insights of developmental psychology and cultural anthropology to examine the development of moral thinking. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of small-scale communities of hunter-gatherers and farmers in Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea, C.R. Hallpike studies the means by which individual thinking interacts with complex social factors to produce moral ideas and the effects of worldview on ethical systems. This book is recommended for scholars of psychology, anthropology, and philosophy.

Political correctness has reduced social anthropology to a state of terminal incoherence, and this collection of papers demolishes some of the fashionable taboos that are involved. The ultra-Darwinism of some sociobiologists has also degenerated into a cult which, like political correctness, is increasingly resistant to rational debate. As well as including some well-known classics, some new papers have been specially written for this collection showing the irrelevance of Darwinism to the social sciences.

Only 10,000 years ago, our ancestors were small groups of hunter-gatherers, with bows and arrows and stone tools. Today, we live in vast nations with all the power of modern science and industry, and the ability to send men to the Moon and to destroy all life on the planet. In the history of the world, 10,000 years is the blink of an eye, yet it has seen the total transformation of human existence. That extraordinary revolution is just as interesting as the Big Bang, or the origin of life, and this book is a clear and concise explanation of how it happened. Human culture was something completely new in the history of the world, and has evolved in a unique way. Darwin's theory of evolution can tell us nothing at all about this very strange process, that went far beyond any mundane struggle for physical survival by 'naked apes'. The picture of Stonehenge, built with enormous labour for no material reward, illustrates one of the central themes of this book - the fundamental importance of the human imagination to the development of science, that made possible the modern mastery of nature.

When The Konso of Ethiopia was first published in 1972, the American Anthropologist described it as 'a work which is destined to become a classic'. The Konso are one of the most important peoples of East Africa, and the author was able to revisit them in 1997. As a result he discovered large amounts of entirely new material, and has been able to produce a completely revised edition that takes account of all the research on the Konso of the last thirty-five years. The result is the definitive account of a truly fascinating people, whose traditional culture is fast disappearing.