IS THERE A PRIMITIVE MENTALlTY?

C. R. HALLPIKE

This article examines the relevance of developmelntal psychology, especially that of Piaget,
to our understanding of the thought of non-literate peoples. It is suggested that thinking is an
adaptive process, greatly influenced by a number of socio-elivironmental factors, especially
literacy and schooling, and that mental processes are therefore not identical in different cul-
tures. Piaget predicts that the development of certain cognitive skills will be inhibited in non-
literate societies, and these predictions are shown to have been confirmed cross-culturally to a
considerable degree. In particular, one finds that in non-literate societies there is no model of
the 'mind' as mediating experience, and little awareness that thought and language are dis-
tinguishable from the things to which they refer. It is further suggested that, at the level of
collective representations, there are some general developmental principles, similar to those
governing the cognitive growth of individuals, whereby the needs of communication, prob-
lem solving and purposive action lead to more generalised and abstract modes of thought.

The object of this article is to assess the relevance of developmental psychology,

especially that of Jean Piaget, to our understanding of primitive thought. 'Primi-
tive' is used throughout the article simply as a convenient abbreviation for 'non-
literate, small-scale, face-to-face societies with subsistence economies.'

Psychology and social anthropology

As ethnographers whose work is conducted mainly in non-literate societies, we
have been obliged in practice to spend a great deal of our fieldwork simply in
establishingjust what are the official and generally accepted beliefs and norms of the
societies we are studying. And as social anthropologists, heavily influenced by the
work of Durkheim, we have considered it a sign of methodological purity to con-
cern ourselves solely with the structure of collective representations, and their
relationship with social organisation. We have assumed that, as Evans-Pritchard
lucidly puts it:
[The social antlhropologist] is not interested in the actors in the drama as individuals but as
persons who play certain roles ... On the other hand, to the psychologist, who is studying
individuals, the feelings, motives, opinions, and so forth, of the actors are of first importance
and the [social] procedures and processes of secondary interest. This essential difference
between social anthropology and psychology is the pons asinorum in the learning of social
anthropology (Evans-Pritchard I95I: 46).

Naturally enough, then, the theory and practice of anthropology have led us to
treat 'primitive thought' as distinguishable from our own only at the level of
beliefs, and our premiss has been that cognitive processes are the same in all
cultures, e.g. 'The reasoning and thinking processes of different peoples in different
cultures do not differ . . . just their values, beliefs and ways of classifying things'
(quoted in Colby and Cole 1973: 63). Inevitably, our analysis of 'primitive thought'
Man (N.S.) II, 253-270.

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 254 C. R. HALLPIKE

has a static quality, largely unrela

problem solving, concept format
anthropologists' analyses and gene
of "mind in action", upon an ana
field I966: 225).
But we can only justify the tr
analysis on the assumption, in th

that there is a unitary, unchanging str

is thought to operate on a series of sha
perception, attention and memory, ass
The structure of these processes was
remain the same at any particular poin

Yet, though we usually prefer t

treating the absence of writing an
such societies and our own, anthr
that literacy and schooling, in
influence the thought processes o
tions that will prevail in literate
Goody, for example, discusses th
skills in a non-literate society as

In 1970 I spent a short time revisitin

with literacy began with the opening
their mathematical operations I foun
a large number of cowries (shell mon
more accurately than I, they had litt
was not entirely lacking; they did th
twenty. But they had no ready-made table in their minds (the 'table' being essentially a
written aid to 'oral' arithmetic) by which they could calculate more complex sums. The
contrast was even more true of subtraction and division; the former could be worked by oral
means (though literates would certainly take to pencil and paper for the more complex sums),
the latter is basically a literate technique. The difference is not so much one of thought or mind as
one of the mechanics of communicative acts (Goody I973: 7, my emphasis).

There is evidently some inconsistency here: Goody talks freely about what is in
the minds of these boys, e.g. 'the concept of multiplication was not entirely lacking',
but at the end he suddenly denies that any differences in thought processes are
involved for literates and non-literates-it is all just a matter of 'the mechanics of
communicative acts'. Would he also maintain that there are no differences between
the thought processes of illiterate labourers and Cambridge graduates and that,
apart from factual knowledge, each simply performs a different set of communica-
tive acts? Perhaps he would, but such a theoretical position is, whether one likes it
or not, a psychological theory which needs defending. Yet what is so striking, not
only about this paper, but about Goody's and other anthropologists' writings on
the impact of literacy in primitive societies (Goody & Watt I963; Goody (ed.)
I968) is the utter lack of any reference to the work of cross-cultural developmental
psychologists on precisely the same subject. In this area of research, however, the
choice is not between doing social anthropology or psychology, but between doing
professional research, and doing amateurish research.
The point I am making against Goody is that the relative difficulty of subtraction

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 C. R. HALLPIKE 255

compared with addition, and of

traction and addition is not sole
problems on paper. Some arithm
mastery of more complex logic
example Piaget's (I929) The child
developmental psychology that
arise spontaneously in every chi
and natural environments, and i
like to turn.

II

The application of developmental psychology to the cognitive functioning of individuals in

different environments
The basic claim of developmental psychology to the attention of social anthro-
pologists is that it treats the cognitive development of the child as a process of
interaction between the endogenous structure of the child's thought, and the social
and natural environment, as well as with the purely biological aspects of maturation.
It therefore follows that different natural and social environments may affect the
direction and especially the extent of cognitive development, with consequences
directly relevant to the kinds of problem that can easily be solved in a particular
culture, and the kinds of beliefs, collective representations, and systems of thought
that can be evolved at the social level.
There is not space here to give any extensive exposition of the principles of
developmental psychology, and I shall concentrate on outlining briefly the basic
contentions of Piaget, who has been the major influence.

(a) Piaget's theory of cognitive development

In Piaget's view, which developed as a reaction to behaviourism and associa-
tionism, it is radically false to think of knowledge and thought as the result of some
kind of bit-by-bit accumulation of data and stimulus-response patterns of behaviour,
such that the child's thought is simply a crude copy of external reality that slowly
adds details to achieve a more refined fit. For him, learning is an active and selective,
not just an imitative process, dominated by a constant interaction and process of
equilibration between the organism's capacity to assimilate the information from
the environment to its own cognitive structures in the form of co-ordinating
schemes, and the necessity of accommodating to that environment. Thought is thus a
basic means of adaptation to a specific environment, and may be expected to differ
in a predictable manner in different environments.
Learning first takes place in the form of action alone, the sensori-motor stage; by
the progressive co-ordination of actions, the child becomes capable of distinguishing
means from ends, and of devising novel means of solving fresh problems. But the
child's problem-solving capacity is greatly enhanced by the beginning of the
capacity for semiotic functions-language, mental imagery, symbolic gestures,
deferred imitation, and so on-by which problems can be interiorised before action
to solve them takes place, which is the basis of all planned and purposive action.
(It is worth stressing here that 'intelligence', in the sense of the adaptation of means

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 256 C. R. HALLPIKE

to ends, or the capacity to go b

also present at the sensori-mot
But the capacity to produce se
ates the child to form more co
motor stage, lasting usually fo
child gradually attains the reali
other objects, and that these ha
also learns to co-ordinate tactil
This progressive dissociation of
functions, but because of the va
much longer-the child has to g
physical experience, and has
structures to this experience.
In the early years of semiotic
are centred on perceptual or im
the child attains the capacity f
years in Europe. At this pre-op
tinues to assimilate experienc
Inhelder say,

we find a 'realism' due to a lack of differentiation between the physical and the psychical.
Names are attached physically to things; dreams are little material tableaux which you con-
template in your own bedroom; thought is a kind of voice ('the mouth in the back of my
head that talks to the mouth in the front'). Animism springs from the same lack of differentia-
tion but in the opposite direction; everything that is in movement is alive and consciotus,
the wind knows that it blows, the sun that it moves, etc. (Piaget & Inhelder I966: i io).

At the stage of concrete operations, which succeeds the pre-operatory stage, as

the child comprehends the reversibility of processes he begins to grasp the principle
of conservation-that is, how crucial dimensions such as weight, length, volume,
and so on can remain the same in spite of an alteration in other dimelnsions. In
learning to hold two ideas in his mind simultaneously he becomes capable of
distinguishing between the apparent and the actual behaviour of objects.
He grasps that he stands in the same relation to other people-such as 'brother'
-as they do to him, and acquires on the social plane the same awareness of his
difference from those around him as he earlier acquired in relation to physical
objects. Co-operative behaviour becomes more complex with the developing
capacity to formulate and adhere to rules. He begins to grasp the logic of part-
whole inclusion, to construct fairly complex series using the principle of transitivity,
while his notions of chance and causality also develop towards the ability to dis-
tinguish the physical from the psychical and to accept that events may occur at
random, unwilled and conforming to no preordained pattern.
The final major stage of development occurs when the child is capable of
representing concrete reality without reference to action or imagery, but solely
through the manipulation of propositions. This permits thinking about thinking
and the forms of language, and the construction of 'combinatorial systems' of
thought by which classes of objects and actions are brought into entirely new
conceptual relations, not previously encountered in real life. Ideas and hypotheses
are combined in affirmative or negative statements and operated upon by logical

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 C. R. HALLPIKE 257

principles unattainable at the le

junction, exclusion, reciprocal i
covered for solving problems-i
without resorting to trial and
etc.-performed in the course o
tools a whole series of relationships becomes comprehensible-various types of
proportion, double systelms of reference, and various types of equilibrium and pro-
bability, for example.
As Piaget and Inhelder sum up the crucial characteristics of this stage, in contrast
with those of concrete operations:

The concrete operations relate directly to objects anld to groups of objects (classes), to rela-
tions between objects and to the counting of objects. Thus the logical organlisation ofjudge-
ments and arguments is inseparable from their content. That is, the operations function only
with referelnce to observations or representations regarded as true, and not on the basis of mere
hypothesis. The great novelty about this [the formal] stage is that by means of a differentiation
between form and content the subject becomes capable of reasoning correctly about proposi-
tions that he considers pure hypotheses. He becomes capable of drawing the necessary con-
clusions from truths which are merely possible, which constitutes the beginning of hypo-
thetico-deductive thought (Piaget & Inhelder I966: I32).

At this stage, thought itself becomes an object of thought, which is the essence of
abstraction.
More generally, looking at the course of development as a whole, Piaget suggests
that thought develops as a result of the demands of communication and collabora-
tion between children and other members of society, the manipulation of the con-
crete environment, and the demands of purposive action, the result being the pro-
gressive socialisation of thought. In the course of this process, there is increasing
dissociation between the knower and the known, and an increasingly clear under-
standing that the activities of the mind, especially logic and language, are separable
from the physical world to which they relate.
A great deal more could be said about Piaget's theory, but space forbids, and I
will only draw attention here to a few central points. The first is that it is a model
that gives an essential place to the nature of the society and environment of the
child; in no way do Piaget or other developmental psychologists claim that these
stages are purely endogenously generated, inevitable, and spontaneous. All he does
claim is that it is a continuous process and, that at whatever rate it occurs, the general
course of development will follow the order described.
Again, it is clear that it is possible to reason about the world by action alone, by
imagery, or by formal operations, or by a combination of these. It would thus not
be correct to infer that it is 'stupider' to represent the world without the use offormal
operations-formal thought may possess greater conceptual power, but enactive or
concrete thought may be more appropriate and effective in many contexts. One
thinks here of the tailor on the Island of Laputa who measured Gulliver for a
singularly ill-fitting suit of clothes by means of trigonometry!
Finally, referring back to the constant tension between assimilation and accom-
modation, it follows that it is possible for cognitive development to stabilise in
relation to the environment before the stage of formal operations has been reached
and some of the concrete operations may not be developed either.

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 258 C. R. HALLPIKE

Ifcognitive growth occurs in

affected by the socio-cultural en
Piaget's research has all been ca
children, and is thus vulnerabl
have no claim to universal valid
has received an impressive degr
American children, it is conced
validate his theory cross-cultura
himself has said,

Cross-cultural studies are difficult t

training in the techniques of operational testing, namely with free conversation, and not
standardized in the manner of tests, and all psychologists do not have this training; a sufficient
ethnological sophistication, and a complete knowledge of the language are also prerequisites.
We know only a few attempts of this quality (quoted in Dasen 1974: 410).

So despite Piaget's reservations on their value, in practice a great deal of effort has
been expended on those aspects of his theory that are most easily put into the form
of quantifiable, physical tests, though it seems that those who have administered
them have generally taken considerable trouble ethnographically to ensure that
their subjects understand what is required of them.
Conservation of quantity, length, etc. lends itself particularly well to testing of
this sort, and Dasen has made a survey of the results of these tests carried out in
non-literate societies. While the problem is experimentally extremely complex, and
the results do not all point to a consistent conclusion, studies of different groups do
give considerable support to the general predictions of Piaget's theory. One finds
that conservation of the various dimensions is usually acquired in the order that
Piaget predicts, and that the rate of acquisition is delayed for the non-literate as
opposed to the literate, the rural as opposed to the urban, and that conservation is
sometimes not attained at all in respect of some dimensions like volume, by a
substantial number of those tested.
Dasen also writes,

Were (I968) administered verbal-logical and empirical-formal tests to I4-I6 year old sub-
jects in New Guinea. He failed to find any trace of formal thought in those age groups. His
negative findings have been confirmed with different tests and samples in New Guinea
(Kelly I971) (Dasen 1974: 412).

Prince (I969) in his study of the growth of scientific concepts among New Guinea
school children also found clear evidence to support Piaget's general thesis, and I
shall consider some other confirmations of Piaget shortly. But at this stage, as
Dasen says,

Clearly, there is not nearly enough evidence on which to draw firm conclusions. However, it
seems that Piaget's 'prediction' (I966: 309: 1971: i i6-i 8) that the reasoning of many indi-
viduals in so called primitive societies would not develop beyond the stage of concrete opera-
tions may one day be verified (Dasen I974: 412).

(b) Conceptual realism and animism

I referred earlier to one of the most significant aspects of Piaget's theory-the
conceptual realism of children; that is, the inability to conceive the mind as

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 C. R. HALLPIKE 259

mediating experience and being t

separate language and thoughts f
for example, are perceived as be
properties); and in general to be
have a life of their own, a lack o
formal reasoning. We might exp
and thought are integrally relat
form any model of the 'mind' and of thought and language as distinguishable
from their referents. Lienhardt writes as follows on the conceptual realism of the
Dinka, for example,

The Dinka have no conception which at all closely corresponds to our popular modern con-
ception of the 'mind', as mediating and, as it were, storing up the experiences of the self.
There is for them no such interior entity to appear, on reflection, to stand between the ex-
periencing self at any given moment and what is or has been an exterior influence upon the
self. So it seems that what we should call in some cases the 'memories' of experiences, and
regard therefore as in some way intrinsic and interior to the remembering person and modi-
fied in their effect upon him by that interiority, appear to the Dinka as exteriorly acting upon
him, as were the sources from which they derived. Hence it would be impossible to suggest to
Dinka that a powerful dream was 'only' a dream, and might for that reason be dismissed as
relatively unimportant in the light of day, or that a state of possession was grounded 'merely'
in the psychology of the person possessed. They do not make the kind of distinction between
the psyche and the world which would make such interpretation significant for them
(Lienhardt I96I: I49).

Thus what we would classify as mental or subjective phenomena, the Dinka

transfer into what we would call the objective world; Lienhardt's insight into a
fundamental difference between the primitive world view and our own is one of
the most significant in the study of primitive thought, the more so since it was
made quite independently of Piaget.
Conceptual realism of this kind is reported by a number of cross-cultural studies:
Greenfield and Bruner write for example of unschooled Wolof children's in-
dissociation between language and what is referred to:

It would seem that the unschooled Wolof lacked Western self-consciousness: they do not
distinguish between their own thought or statement about something and the thing itself.
Thought and the object of thought seem to be one. Consequently, the idea of explaining a
statement is meaningless, it is the external world that is to be explained (Greenfield & Bruner
I966: 92).

Conceptual realism is the ascription of what we would call external reality to

subjective, mental events; the converse of it is animism, which Piaget defines as the
assumption that what educated Europeans would describe as subjective mental
events such as purpose, consciousness, will, etc, are properties of objects in the
physical world, both realism and animism deriving from a basic indissociation
between knower and known. ('Animism' is, of course, a word of notoriously
variable definition, and Piaget's restricted use of the term should be noted.)
It is important here not to misinterpret Piaget. He distinguishes between diffuse
aniimism, lasting until the European child is about four or five and systematic
animism. 'The child's thought begins with a lack of differentiation between living
and inert bodies since it possesses no criteria by which to make the distinction'
(Piaget I929: 229). Animism is a particular manifestation of this indissociation,

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 260 C. R. HALLPIKE

'which consists in attributing to

mind attributes to itself, such
about the age of five, in Europ

animism tends to crystallize into a set of more clearly defmed beliefs, which Piaget terms
systematic animism. They are no longer all-pervasive, and come to the surface spontaneously
only when 'chance phenomena which the child cannot understand by reason of their un-
expectedness' (Piaget I929: 2I3) are encountered. Nevertheless the child does tacitly cling to
many such beliefs, which can be elicited by special probing(Jahoda I958: 203).

Systematic animism is therefore much more subject to social and cultural

influences than diffuse animism, and the persistence of this type of animism is, on
Piaget's own admission, liable to be very uneven in different cultures and in diff-
erent individuals, so that some children exhibit hardly any animism, while much
older children may do so, and the children's answers may be contradictory. Con-
sequently, the most that can be predicted is that some of the responses of young
children in all cultures should be marked by animism, and that the proportions of
such responses should decline with increasing age.
In a survey of cross-cultural tests of child animism, Jahoda finds much to criticise
in the definitions used by investigators, in methods of testing, and in two cases such
clear bias against Piaget, or ignorance of his concept of animism and methodology
that the results in these particular cases are worthless. Apart from these two negative
instances, he concludes that most of the reported results did, in fact, support
Piaget's minimum predictions, given above. The only completely negative results
from cross-cultural testing, those of Margaret Mead (I932) were clearly the result of
her faulty method of testing, and of a definition of animism far more extreme than
any Piaget would support. (Though in fairness to Mead, it should also be said that
she was out in the field testing Piaget before most of her colleagues had ever heard
of him.)
Some other aspects of Piaget's theory, relating in particular to the cognitive
impact of literacy, have also been evaluated cross-culturally by Bruner and others,
whose work we may now consider.

(c) The imnpact of schooling and literacy on cognitive growth

Even if, as has been suggested, cognitive development in primitive societies

stabilises before the attainment of formal operations, this does not preclude the
further development and refinement of existing cognitive skills during the rest of
adult life. One is not therefore implying that adults in primitive societies are
intellectually merely the equivalent of retarded children in our society, but that in
these societies cognitive skills appropriate to the pre-operatory and concrete
operations stages are selected for development to a very high degree of expertise-
the reader will recall, for example, Goody's discovery that the non-schooled boys
were much more adept than he was in some aspects of computation. Furthermore,
different cognitive skills will be fostered by different ecologies, value systems and
types of social relations.
As Bruner2 puts it;

We have also commented that the extent and shape of this intellectual development [of
children] since in its very nature. it depends on assistance from a culture, will vary as a function

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 C. R. HALLPIKE 26I

of culture. Cultures, so goes the classic line of relativism, are all different. Yet to take this
position in analysing the impact of culture on growth dooms one to a study of what is dif-
ferent about growing up in different places, and that is surely a trivial pursuit in comparison
with the study of the few powerful shaping forces in culture that produce enormous uni-
formities in growth, and a few crucial differences (Bruner I966: 59).

Bruner suggests that the factors in childhood experience making for difference in
cognitive development are, apart from literacy itself, the extent to which children
are surrounded, as in a modern urban environment, by the work of man; the degree
to which they are reared apart from the rest of the community and from which
their schooling is in subject matter a separate world; the degree to which children
have imparted to them the rules of their society verbally and explicitly by their
parents instead of learning them by participating in social life; and the extent to
which the culture is scientific and there are conflicts in modes of representation, as
between the concrete and the formal.
To this list one could add that in societies where people grow up surrounded only
by the organic processes of nature, and never handle mechanical appliances or
maclhines, there will be far less opportunity for developing the later operations of
the concrete stage, still less those of formal, logico-deductive thought. This is partly
because in such societies measurement and quantification are poorly developed,
but also because the organic processes of nature are irreversible, not easily broken
down into component elements, and do not generally lend themselves to the kind
of experimental logic that machines do. The organic is also full of concrete sym-
bolic potential, and affective significance, especially since one can find there many
resemblances to the human life processes.
Again, it seems that in many primitive societies individual questioning of the
social and natural order is often not encouraged. Wober, for example, discussing
traditional African concepts of intelligence writes:
The available literature suggests that ideas about intelligence or human ability do indeed
differ in East and South Central Africa from Western models. Barbara Levine (I963) writing
of the Gusii in Kenya says, 'The good child is the obedient child-smartness or brightness by
itself is not a highly valued characteristic and the Nyasongo concept of intelligence includes
respect for elders and filial piety as natural ingredients.' Margaret Read (I959) provides a
similar picture among the Ngoni of Malawi. She writes, 'Ngoni adults ... summed up the
aims of upbringing of children in one word, "respect". They also wished to inculcate wisdom
which was contrasted with " cleverness ", and wisdom included knowledge, good judgement,
ability to control people and to keep at peace, and skill in using speech' (Wober I974: 27I).

To return to those factors which Bruner isolated as crucial for cognitive growth,
in societies where learning takes place in the context of daily life, such questioning
as Piaget reports for European children has little chance to develop beyond ele-
mentary levels. As Fortes says of the learning situation among the Tale:
The natives say that small children frequently ask questions about people and things they see
around them. However, listening to children's talk for 'why?' questions, I was surprised to
note how rarely they occurred; and the few instances I recorded referred to objects or persons
foreign to the normal outline of Tale life. It would seem that Tale children rarely have to
ask 'why?' in regard to the people and things of their normal environment because so much
of their learning occurs in real situations (Fortes I938: 30).

In a literate society, as Bruner points out, the situation is very different:

. . . there is a knowledge and skill in the culture far in excess of what any one individual
knows. And so, increasingly, there develops an economical technique of instructing the young

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 262 C. R. HALLPIKE

based heavily on telling out of context rather than showing in context. For the school is a
sharp departure from indigenous practice. It takes learning, as we have noted, out of the
context of immediate action just by putting it into school. This very extirpation makes learn-
ing become an art in itself, freed from the immediate ends of action, preparing the learner for
the chain of reckoning remote from payoff that is needed for the formulation of complex
ideas (Bruner I965: IOO9).
With specific reference to the importance and impact of literacy on the child,
Greenfield and Bruner say,
The written language, as Vygotsky (I96I) points out, virtually forces remoteness of reference
on the language user. Consequently, he cannot use pointing as an aid, nor can he count on
simple labelling that depends on the present context to make clear what one's label refers to.
Writing, then, is training in the use of linguistic contexts as independent of immediate
reference. Thus, the imbedding of a label in a sentence structure indicates that it is less tied to
its linguistic context. The implications of this fact for manipulability are great; linguistic
contexts can be turned upside down more easily than real ones; this linguistic independence
of context produced by certain grammatical modes may favour the development of the
more context-independent superordinate structure manifested by the school children
(Greenfield & Bruner I966: I04).

Vygotsky and Luria found, for example (Luria I971), that among the Uzbeks of
central Asia illiterate peasants would not accept the possibility of making purely
logical, syllogistic inferences, if the facts in the premisses were unknown to them
or contrary to their experience, but that those who had received some schooling
and acquired literacy could accept the possibility of logical inference irrespective
of the truth or falsity of the assumptions. Cole and Scribner (I974: I6i) report a
similar response from the Kpelle of Liberia.
Cole and Scribner sum up, though not from a specifically Piagetian viewpoint,
the conclusions of cross-cultural research on the impact of schooling and literacy
on the cognitive growth of children in traditionally non-literate societies as follows.
With the information now on hand we would suggest that classifying operations do seem to
change in certain ways with exposure to Western or modem living experiences. Taxonomic3
class membership seems to play a more dominating role as the basis for grouping items when
people move from isolated village life to towns more affected by commerce and the exchange
of people and things. Attendance at a Western type school accentuates this switchover to
taxonomic grouping principles. But schooling seems to affect even more than this: attendance
at school apparently encourages an approach to classification tasks that incorporates a search
for a rule-for a principle that can generate the answers. At the same time, schooling seems to
promote an awareness of the fact that alternative rules are possible-one might call this a
formal approach to the task in which the individual searches for and selects from the several
possibilities a rule of solution. Finally, the one unambiguous finding in the studies to date is
that schooling (and only schooling) contributes to the way in which people describe and
explain their own mental operation (Cole & Scribner I974: I22).
As one might expect, this difference in cognitive skills between literate and non-
literate is accentuated over time. Greenfield et al. say with respect to the Wolof of
Senegal,
This has also been a persistent observation between 'culturally deprived' and other American
children (Deutsch I965; John I963). Thus it seems that the conceptual development of lower
class American children resembles that of the Wolof in this regard. If so, then early intellec-
tual stabilization signifies that full cognitive growth is not being attained. In short, it appears
that some environments 'push' cognitive growth longer than others ... So it may be that
modem technical societies demand a fundamental cognitive change as their capacities change
with biological growth; whereas traditional non-technical societies demand only the per-
fection and elaboration of first ways of looking at the world (Greenfield et a! I966: 3I7-I8).

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 C. R. HALLPIKE 263

Schooling is not the only signi

in literate, industrial societies,
of the differences in the conce
middle class origins. In particu
level of conceptualisation-an orientation to a low order of causality, a lack of
interest in processes, a preference to be aroused by and respond to that which is
immediately given rather than to the implications of a matrix of relationships . . .'
(Bernstein I973: 7I), an emphasis upon description as opposed to analysis, a con-
cern with things and their attributes rather than with processes, a relative inability
to give precise formulation to ideas and relationships, while language is not treated
as an instrument for expressing uniquely individual experience. Bernstein's findings
are dearly compatible with those of the developmental psychologists referred to in
this artide on the cognitive functioning of members of non-literate societies, al-
though Bernstein's own perspective is that of a sociologist of language, and he
makes little or no explicit reference to psychology. Lack of space however prevents
any further consideration of his work here.

(d) Conclusions
To sum up, while Piaget's theory has been supported in a number of respects,
we can say that a great deal more cross-cultural research will have to be done,
especially in the field of adult cognitive processes, in non-literate societies, before
we shall be in the position to assess the contributions of developmental psychology
to the study of primitive thought in detail. Our knowledge of problem-solving
techniques in primitive societies is particularly deficient, as Cole and Scribner say,
... so few psychological studies of problem solving in different cultural settings have been
conducted that a survey of this work can have little content (Cole & Scribner I974: i68).

But the basic contentions of developmental psychology do suggest that it is

fallacious to think of 'reason' or 'logic' as some kind of unitary faculty which
members of all cultures possess to the same degree. Rather, reasoning is an assem-
blage of cognitive skills developed in relation to the demands of specific environ-
ments, some of which may inhibit the development of formal, propositional think-
ing and the more complex concrete operations which are necessary for scientific
thought.
It is also somewhat astonishing that anthropologists, and for that matter philoso-
phers, trying to explain the differences between European and primitive thought,
have not considered the obvious point that people who go to school for a number
of years and acquire literacy and numeracy, are likely to think in rather different
ways from those who have never had this experience. To this extent, the findings
of developmental psychology, like so much in the advancement of science, are
simply the rediscovery of common sense.

III
Developmental aspects of collective representations
I would like to turn now from the development of cognitive skills in the indi-
vidual, to consider some aspects of collective representations, especially belief
systems, in primitive societies in the light of general developmental principles.

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 264 C. R. HALLPIKE

It seems clear that the system

coherent in terms of a few ba
reality. Drawing attention to some points of resemblance between traditional
African thought and Western science,4 Horton rightly refers to,

the quest for unity underlying apparent diversity; for simplicity underlying apparent com-
plexity; for order underlying apparent disorder; for regularity underlying apparent anomaly
(Horton I967: 5I).
I think no ethnographer who has ever set himself to analyse a primitive belief
system would disagree that these are among the, albeit implicit, aims of such
thought, though all men tend to compartmentalise their thought, and to igniore
inconsistencies.
For example, the Azande believe that witchcraft is inherited only in the male line,
and that only a post mortem test is proof that a person was a witch. They refuse to
believe, however, that if one person in a clan is proved by this means to have been a
witch, all the clan must also be witches. But it is surely unnecessary to invoke
multi-valued logic, as does Cooper (I975) to explain this apparent tolerance of
inconsistency. The Azande, like ourselves, compartmentalise their thinking, and do
not habitually bring disparate areas of experience into juxtaposition-it is only
outsiders like anthropologists who take elements of indigenous thought out of their
context of experience and force native thinkers into a corner in this way. The
progressive unification and axiomatisation of systems of thought, and the removal
of inconsistencies is, however, a clearly discernible tendency in the evolution of
philosophy, science, and religion.
It is probable, in fact, that all systems of thought have certain features in common.
More specifically, we can say that,

(a) the coherence of a system of thought implies the selectivity and hierarchical
ranking of its categories and concepts, from a few of the most general type to a
large number of the most specific. As Horton says, the level of theory varies with
its context, and referring for example to spirits in certain West African societies,
he says:
They [spirits] are the basis of a theoretical scheme which typically covers the thinker's own
community and immediate environment. The supreme being, on the other hand, provides
the means of setting an event within the widest possible context. For it is the basis of a theory
of the origin and life course of the world seen as a whole (Horton I967: 6I).

(b) The coherence of the belief system means that it will be selective and ignore
aspects of experienice that are not seen as relevant to its central concerns. For ex-
ample, the Konso have no interest in how the physical world was created, since for
them God is primarily relevant to Man as the source of morality.

(c) Thinking will almost invariably be conducted according to conventional

criteria. It is not possible, either for savages or scientists, to question everything,
and as Kuhn (1970) has pointed out, a successful experiment itself demands ad-
herence to a model which alone makes any results meaningful.
Granted, then, that considered as systems of thought, primitive and scientific
thinking will have a number of basic resemblances, Horton also delineates a number
of characteristics of primitive thought, all of which he sums up in the distinction

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 C. R. HALLPIKE 265

between 'closed' and 'open' syste

giving the following quotation f
as an apt summary of the 'close

There is no incentive to agnosticism. All their beliefs hang together, and were a Zande to
give up faith in witch-doctorhood he would have to surrender equally his faith in witchcraft
and oracles ... In this web of belief every strand depends on every other strand, and a Zande
cannot get out of its meshes because it is the only world he knows. It is the texture of his
thought, and he cannot think that his thought is wrong (Evans-Pritchard 1937: 194).

For Horton, members of closed cultures 'cannot escape the tendency to see a
unique anld intimate link between words and things'; thought is bound up with the
particular context that evokes it, and with the actions to which it is related and
appropriate, all because members of closed cultures cannot escape from the modes
of thought of their own culture. Again, there is no 'second order thinking', or
'thinking about thought processes' in such cultures:

the traditional thinker, because he is unable to imagine possible alternatives to his established
theories and classifications, can never start to formulate generalized norms of reasoning and
knowing. For only when there are alternatives can there be clloice, and only when there is
choice can there be norms governing it (Horton I967: I62).

Furthermore, such systems of thought are conceived in a personal idiom, and:

There is little doubt that because the theoretical entities of traditional thought happen to be
people, they give particular scope for the working of emotional and aesthetic motives
(Horton I967: I64).

In view of the preceding discussion of the kinds of individual cognitive develop-

ment fostered in non-literate cultures, it goes without saying that the concept of
the 'closed predicament' seems to me inadequate by itself to explain many of these
aspects of primitive thought. Horton does, it is true, consider that lack of literacy
is one of the factors responsible for the persistence of closed systems of thought, the
other factor being the lack of genuine and intimate contact between very different
beliefsystems and cultures.
On the social effects of the oral tradition, he says:

In these circumstances, everything tends to give the main tenets of theory an absolute and
timeless validity. In so doing it prevents the development of any awareness of alternatives.
Oral transmission, then, is clearly one of the basic supports of the 'closed' predicament
(Horton I967: i8o).

Literacy, therefore, in Horton's scheme of things, only serves to provide yet

another opportunity for encountering alternative ways of thinking, in this case
from the past; its cognitive impact on those who acquire it is quite ignored. On the
limitations of intellectual exchange in trade, he rightly says:

The trader encountered the thought of his alien partners at the level of common sense but not
usually at the level of theory. Since common sense worlds, in general, differ very little in
comparison with theoretical worlds, such encounters did not suffice to stimulate a strong sense
of alternatives (Horton I967: I82).

But while awareness of alternatives, and comparison generally is of fundamental

importance in the development of thought, other social factors must also be con-
sidered, in particular, the nature of the communications that will be fostered and

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 266 C. R. HALLPIKE

appropriate in face-to-face com

largely shared by all.
In such circumstances, it is ev
rules and categories of experie
explicit expression, except on t
graphers is that members of su
details necessary to operate th
scribe their operation as a who
operation or, for example, in st
tive order, and so on. Such cogn
cases of uninformed but unusu
Correspondingly, in our type o
alised and/or abstract forms of
experience between communica
Following from this fact of sh
ledge between group member
much more use than we can of
which depend on intimate, spe
These techniques of communcia
generally opaque to outsiders.
Again, as has already been poi
tion in any society is education
skills have to be developed, and
part.
And if space permitted I would like to stress the fact that the institutions of primi-
tive society are not usually organised in terms of explicit and over-riding purposes.
It is only when an organisation has to satisfy certain criteria of performance and
efficiency that alternative solutions need to be considered, and hence a comparison
is generated between what is, and what might be; that is, hypothetical and directed
thought.
We can see that these modes of thought and cognitive skills are in fact well
adapted to the circumstances in which they have developed. Those who are faced
with a wide variety of possible experience must develop a generalised, deductive
type of strategy that gives maximum flexibility of response in the absence of de-
tailed local knowledge, whereas men whose work takes place within a delimited
area can rely on ad hoc, customary solutions.
Gladwin (I974) for example, contrasts the methods by which a Truk, without the
ability to read a chart or compass, or use a sextant or chronometer, navigates from
one island to another, with the methods that a qualified European sailor would use.
Our method is to begin by constructing a general plan and deducing a precise
course from this, taking account beforehand of likely deviating factors to be en-
countered. The Truk begins from specific knowledge and adjusts his course accord-
ing to actual contingencies, a precisely opposite procedure. Both methods are
equally successful, and equally justifiable in relation to the very different back-
grounds of the navigators, since the Truk spends his life in one small area, while our
principles of navigation have been designed to allow navigation in ignorance of
specific local conditions, in any area of the world.

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 C. R. HALLPIKE 267

Finally, modes of thought dom

moral values are very efficien
societies, but such thinking ca
machines, and is inappropriate in societies which approximate more and more
closely to the condition of machines. To this extent, then, primitive modes of
thought are very much better suited to the tasks of communication and control in
these societies than are the learned abstractions of sociologists or systems experts.
I would suggest, then, that collective representations change in response to the
need for more effective communication between members of different groups-to
the need for translatability, in fact-to the need for more generalised strategies for
dealing with the unfamiliar, and to the development of conscious purpose in the
shaping of social institutions. It is no coincidence that the Pre-Socratic philosophers
of the Greek colonies in Asia minor lived in an area permeated by different philoso-
phies and belief systems (from Scythia, Persia, Babylonia, and Egypt), having
socially heterogeneous communities, with a phonetic alphabet that made literacy
more easily accessible, and where laws were not only written in public codes, but
were arrived at, as Hussey points out (Hussey 1972: 9) with the consent of the
community to serve definite ends.
It seems to me that these considerations entitle us to place the evolution from the
'closed' to the 'open' culture in a more general framework of cognitive develop-
ment, and that there are some resemblances between the evolution of collective
representations and of cognitive growth in the individual. More specifically, we
can find in the evolution of social systems of thought and representations of reality
a progression from the context-bound, the concrete, the non-specialised, the af-
fective, the culturally subjective or ethnocentric, and the absolutist, to the generalis-
able, specialised, abstract, impersonal, objective and relativist. We may also expect
to find the progressive unification of disparate areas of experience as part of this
process. This type of development is most clearly demonstrated in the history of the
natural sciences, being specially evident in the history of concepts of measurement
and quantification, time reckoning, writing, geometry, and also in many spheres
of social life, including religion.
Similarly, at the level of individual cognitive development, Piaget describes the
general transformation of the thought of the child as one from the syncretic to the
socialised. Syncretic thought is characterised by a lack of unity or consistency in
organisation, by lack of purpose and by affective tone; it is bound up in imagery,
largely incommunicable and proceeds directly from premisses to conclusions with-
out the ability to explain how the conclusion was reached, or to re-trace the steps
in an argument.
The necessity of communication, collaboration in tasks, and adaptation to social
and physical reality eventually lead the child to the development of socialised
thought, where beliefs are harmonised and integrated, purposive, objective, and
can be set out in logical form as opposed to being merely dogmatic convictions.
Now, while adults in a primitive society are clearly, as individuals, adults, and
not egocentric and clearly conform to the 'socialised' pattern of thought, the same
is not true of the belief system and collective representations of their society as a
whole. While, unlike Piaget's syncretic thought, the belief systems of primitive
society are in some respects systematic, as was previously noted, their aims are

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 268 C. R. HALLPIKE

frequently obscure and mult

affective, bound up with conte
with concrete symbolism; they
tures unless they have scientif
from conscious reflection or pe
It is suggested, then, that cons
sentations and of individual m
tions to meet the demands o
solving in increasingly demand
in section II some of the chara
factorily explained by consider
traditional non-literate societies
in a culture must be closely ass
viduals in that culture.

IV
Conclusions

The findings of developmental psychology are therefore relevant to anthro-

pological theories of primitive thought in the following respects:
(a) They focus our attention on thought as an assemblage of related cognitive
skills and strategies that are developed in relation to a particular social and natural
environment, and adaptive to it.
(b) They lead us to recognise that one can understand the world through the very
different modes of representation provided by action, imagery, and formal, logical
thinking.
(c) They help us to realise that much of the contrast between the thought processes
of members of primitive societies, and members of industrial societies, can more
fruitfully be regarded as the contrast between the thought processes of those who
have been to school and acquired literacy, and those who have not, thereby also
directing our attention to similarities between the thought processes of the less
educated in our own society and members of non-literate societies.
(d) In so far as the child is father of the man, and requires special educational cir-
cumstances to develop the capacity for formal operations, then an elucidation of the
cognitive skills at which growth stabilises in a particular culture will tell us a great
deal about the kinds of thinking in which adults will be proficient, and the kinds of
belief system that will prevail.

But, if, as social anthropologists, we accept the relevance of developmental

psychology to our studies, we must concede that it will also affect our model of the
relationship between society and collective representations. We can in fact only
regard collective representations as purely social phenomena if we also regard the
human mind as a kind of homogeneous wax at all times and in all places, passively
receiving the impressions of each culture. But if it is conceded that there are umi-
versal stages of cognitive development, and that these can be accelerated or retarded-
in respect of particular sets of cognitive skills by different environments, it follows
that the kind of society and the type of belief systems which members of non-

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 C. R. HALLPIKE 269

literate cultures will be able to cr

cognitive skills nurtured or negle
temperament of adults can be sign
should be accepted that the mode
by the cognitive development fos
able to regard the belief systems o
geneous minds, differing from us
of classification.
Piaget's constructivism, his emp
between individuals and their env
thought are evolved, also provide
realistic theory of the relation b
than either those, like Levi-Strau
tions are universal and innate, or
that social organisation determnin
could in some miraculous way evo
I do not expect that what has be
anthropologists of the value of d
primitive thought. What I hope i
possible for the discipline to go o
non-literate societies without any
and if anthropologists disagree wi
to provide a better one.

NOTES

This article is a revised version of that delivered on 29 August I975 at Surrey University to
Section H of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
I An 'operation' in the Piagetian sense is not simply a manipulation but displays an under-
standing of reversibility. That is, the ability to retrace the steps in an argument, or a numerical
computation, or a displacement of objects, and so on.
2 Bruner and other developmental psychologists referred to in this paper differ from Piaget on
some theoretical points, but at the elementary level of exposition in this article such differences
can be treated as relatively secondary and technical.
3 Taxonomic classification is based on the common structural properties of the objects classi-
fied, as opposed to their common uses, functions, or associations in everyday life. See Chapter
3, 'Classification', in Cole et al (I97I).
4 Though I would, in so far as I am qualified to pass an opinion on science, take a more
Kuhnian position on the practice of science than Horton, with Gellner I973: i65.
5 Here, and elsewhere in this paper, the reader will detect resonances with the thought of
Levy-Bruhl, e.g. 'Just because our mental activity is more differentiated, and we are more
accustomed to analysing its functions, it is difficult for us to realise by any effort of imagination,
more complex states in which emotional or motor elements are integral parts of the representa-
tion ... By this state of mental activity in primitives we must understand something which is
not a purely or almost purely intellectual or cognitive phenomenon, but a more complex
one, in which what is really "representation" to us is found blended with other elements of an
emotional or motor character, coloured and imbued by them, and therefore implying a dif-
ferent attitude with regard to the objects represented' (How Natives Think p. 36).
I have deliberately avoided any discussion of Levy-Bruhl's theories of primitive thought not
because I consider them unimportant or unilluminating, but because he is still so misunderstood
by social anthropologists that a lengthy consideration of his work here might divert attention
from the main propositions of this article. I hope to consider the work of Levy-Bruhl on an-
other occasion, in the detail that it merits.

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 270 C. R. HALLPIKE

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