Dr Barry Morris

Biography

Since commencing my PhD research into race relations in Kempsey, New South Wales in 1980, I have been spent over three to four years fieldwork research in the region. The successful completion of the doctoral research resulted in a PhD, which was published by Berg Press, and numerous articles. Subsequently I have been asked to undertaken numerous local consultancy research projects on the mid-north coast. This has involved working for the National Parks and Wildlife Service, Public Works Department, New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council and the New South Wales Native Title Service. The studies has involved research in to two major Connection Reports for Native Title Claims (Crescent Head and Gumma) and Six summary reports on the viability of local regional claims. Over the past twenty seven years, I have contributed years of research into indigenous issues and race relations in Australia. This work led the way in making anthropology relevant to the analysis of contemporary conditions in Australia. It represented a departure from an anthropology confined to examining one cultural arena, replacing it with analysis of the dynamics between state structures and cultural processes. I have produced a significant corpus of refereed articles in leading journals, (such as Canberra Anthropology, Oceania, Social Analysis, Critique of Anthropology). In the early 1990s I conducted research, in collaboration with Dr Thomas Ernst and Dr Kerry Zubrinich, into the trial of the defendants in the `Brewarrina Riot'. The fieldwork involved attending the trial, which was held over the period from the 25th March to the 17th April. The 'Brewarrina riot' has become the focal point of a number of issues in relation to Aborigines and the police, which provided a significant focus of the research. In 1994, I was invited to an international conference, Tribal Minorities and the State Conference, sponsored by Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, in Istanbul, Turkey, to present a paper on the riot trial. I have subsequently published a series of articles on a number of issues associated with the social dynamics and cultural processes associated with the Brewarrina riot. The recent work on the Hanson phenomenon is concerned with the way that egalitarianism and nationalist politics have consolidated themselves as an opposition to policies of affirmative action. My approach throughout my research career has developed out of a demand that we explore the cultural logic that has informed exclusionary practices in Australia rather than more liberal approaches couched in more universal expressions of social or civil rights and, more recently, human rights. My co-editing of Expert Knowledge: First World Peoples, Consultancy, and Anthropology, developed from being invited to Bergen University, Norway as a Visiting Professor in 2002. The book sought to develop an international perspective by inviting an international body of anthropologists from Brazil, South America, South Africa, Canada, Australia and United States to contribute to the issues associated with the role of anthropologists in the growth of the role of consultancy research as expert knowledge. My contribution has been to increase international interest and advance theoretical concerns of the interplay between localised and national expressions and practices of social exclusion and social inclusion. I am a Research Associate of the Wollongong-Newcastle Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS). In recent years I have worked to widen CAPSTRANS research foci to include projects that analyse regional Australian issues in the context of wider Asia-Pacific social transformations. I also enjoyed making a contribution to the discipline of Anthropology at a national level as Vice-President of the Australian Anthropology Society (2003-2006). I was invited to participate in a panel session at the American Anthropological Society Conference, New Orleans (2002).

Research Interest

Anthropology, Sociology, Studies in Human Society