The basic argument of the previous chapters was that the reason why anthropologists cannot ignore the work of cognitive scientists, and for that matter vice versa, was that what they study is a phenomenon that is both cognitive and historical. If we attempt to separate the two, as the opposition between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ attempts to do, we are left without a subject matter. The attempt on the part of anthropologists to ignore the cognitive simply leads them to making assumptions in their writing which, because they are merely implicit, are not critically examined. The purpose of this chapter is twofold. First, it shows the presence of these unexamined and therefore dangerous cognitive assumptions in texts which make no reference to empirical or theoretical work in psychology. Secondly, it will show how, if we scrutinise the implicit psychological assumptions present in the anthropological work and place these side by side with what we know from cognitive science, we can not only question some of the propositions that have been made as they stand, but also reveal hidden riches in the anthropological accounts that enable us to formulate questions for future research in both anthropology and cognitive psychology. This chapter is thus a demonstration of the value of studying people in society as a single historical and psychological process.

Such an exercise has also another purpose. Even though I argued in the conclusion of the previous chapter that the work of the cognitive scientist and the interpretative anthropologist was closer than both sides imagine, the reader of the book might well ask how one can go one step further and suggest how the two disciplines can co-operate in practice in what they each have to say about cognition. Here, I focus on the particularly important issue of time and I propose how co-operation between cognitive and social sciences can move forward our understanding of issues central to both types of disciplines in a way that cannot occur when they work separately. This does not, at first at least, require new types of research by either psychologists or anthropologists but a critical re-examination of findings already obtained. By criticising the achievements of the different disciplinary specialists in the light of knowledge that comes from the other we can, simply by this means, move things forward.