H Morphy

Datos Biográficos

ID4270
NOMBREH Morphy
NOMBRESH
APELLIDOMorphy
FIRMAMORPHY H
AFILIACIONESAustralian National University
ORCID0000-0001-6488-662X
VERIFICADOSí
TOTAL DE OBRAS75
TOTAL DE CITAS315
TOTAL COMO AUTOR75
TOTAL COMO EDITOR0
PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN1980
AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN2026
ÍNDICE H8

  • Towards an Ecological Synergy Between Art History and the Anthropology of Art

    Open AccessH MorphyARTICLEArts2026

    An ecological approach in the broadest sense arguably places art in a context that is unconstrained by disciplinary categories. It is focused on the form of art in context and on all the variables that account for its making and the contexts of its use at the time of its making. The argument of the paper is centred on a set of Yolŋu bark paintings exhibited in the Madayin exhibition that opened in the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College in New Hamps…

  • Evidence from and on Country

    Open AccessH MorphyARTICLEOceania2025Referencias: 2

  • Joyous Maggots'

    H MorphyCHAPTERAnthropology of the Arts2024

    Stanner&s;s On Aboriginal religion is a work of intuitive genius. For Stanner there is almost a disjunction between the complexity of social life and the simplicity of the metaphysical core that lies at the heart of it. The complex reality of life creates a series of masks that obscure the central truths. ‘Myth, song, dance, mime, social organization and institutional practice all lie like so many veils between the observer and that mystery which…

  • The Light of Wangarr

    H MorphyCHAPTERVisual Sense2024

    In relation to Wangarr, the spiritual power of the ancestral being and world creating force, the sacred likanbuy paintings 1 of the Yolngu of Arnhem Land, Australia, have a property of a different order, bir&s;yun, that they do not share with Yolngu paintings of other categories. Bir&s;yun can be termed an aesthetic property since it operates independently of the specific meanings encoded in a painting, though as we shall see it interacts with th…

  • Colonialism, History and the Construction of Place

    H MorphyCHAPTERLandscape2024

    One of the reasons that the concept of landscape is beginning to prove so useful is that it is a concept in between. At a time when simple determinisms are breaking down, and the boundaries between disciplines are continually being breached, it is useful to have a concept that is free from fixed positions, whose meaning is elusive, yet whose potential range is all-encompassing. Landscape is a frame for discourse that encourages the development of…

  • Witness Statements as Cross-Cultural (mis)Communication? Evidence from Blue Mud Bay

    Open AccessFrances Morphy, H MorphyARTICLEAnthropological Forum2023Citada por: 2Referencias: 13

    Translation, broadly defined as the articulation of the relationship between different cultural, social and legal systems, is at the heart of the anthropologist's or linguist's role as an expert witness in a native title hearing. It occurs at the level of individual lexemes, in categorising cultural concepts, and in the frame of the legal context. We exemplify the interrelationships between these by focussing on the quasi-legal use of the English…

  • The Long Way Home

    K Akerman, Henry Atkinson et al.BOOKLong Way Home2022

    Indigenous peoples have long sought the return of ancestral human remains and associated artifacts from western museums and scientific institutions. Since the late 1970s their efforts have led museum curators and researchers to re-evaluate their practices and policies in respect to the scientific uses of human remains. New partnerships have been established between cultural and scientific institutions and indigenous communities. Human remains and…

  • Some Concluding Anthropological Reflections

    H MorphyCHAPTEROn Prayer2022

  • Special Section

    Open AccessH Morphy, Jason M Gibson et al.ARTICLEMuseum Worlds2022

    Anthropology, Art, and Ethnographic Collections: A Conversation with Howard Morphy Jason M. Gibson (JG): In your book Museums, Infinity and the Culture of Protocols: Ethnographic Collections and Source Communities (Morphy 2020), you begin with an anecdote of visiting the Pitt Rivers Museum as a young child. Did museums play a part in sparking an interest in humanity, and its diversity, or were you fascinated by the Other? Book Review: Museums, So…

  • A Filmmaker Fond of Anthropology

    Open AccessH MorphyARTICLEOceania2022Citada por: 1Referencias: 13

  • Marcus Banks 4 July 1960–22 October 2020

    H MorphyARTICLEVisual Studies2021

    I first met Marcus when he was appointed as Demonstrator at the then Institute for Social Anthropology at Oxford University. At other universities the position would have been variously described

  • 'Not Just Pretty Pictures'

    H MorphyCHAPTEROwnership and Appropriation2020

    This paper explores the utility of the concept of relative autonomy in understanding the ways in which the Yolngu people of Eastern Arnhem Land in northern Australia have used art as a mode of action. Yolngu are aware of the different properties of their visual and performing arts and the ways in which art can be used in different contexts. The context of use, including engagement with the colonial ‘other’, contributes to maintaining its diversit…

  • Elite Art for Cultural Elites

    H MorphyCHAPTERIndigenous Cultures in an…2020

    Marketing Indigenous culture as art has to be seen as a moral act. Art is a value-creating process: it involves both the creation of new kinds of values in objects and the increase of their value in terms of exchange. Phenomenological analyses of Aboriginal art emphasise the ways in which art mediates people's experience of world and enables them to see their lives as acting out the ancestral past. Sociological analyses have an overlapping focus …

  • Cultural Adaptation

    H MorphyCHAPTERHuman Adaptation2020

    For much of the twentieth century the concepts of culture and adaptation have been almost equally neglected by British social anthropologists. In both cases the origins of this neglect can be traced to the rejection of the nineteenth century evolutionist paradigm and its replacement by the paradigm of structural functionalist anthropology, which in Britain was associated with the switch from a historically based subject to one that became primari…

  • Toponyms from 3000 years ago? Implications for the history and structure of the Yolŋu social formation in north‐east Arnhem Land

    Open AccessFrances Morphy, H Morphy et al.ARTICLEArchaeology in Oceania/Archæology…2020Citada por: 5Referencias: 25

    The paper focuses on a set of toponyms found on the coast of Blue Mud Bay in northern Australia, in an area today occupied by Yolŋu (Murngin) peoples. In the first part of the paper, we present an analysis, based on geomorphological, archaeological, anthropological and linguistic evidence, to suggest that these toponyms have been in place for at least 3000 years, and that they are early Yolŋu toponyms. We then argue that certain social practices …

  • Encounters at the National Museum of Australia

    H MorphyARTICLEInternational Journal of Heritage…2017Citada por: 1Referencias: 5

    This is not an easy paper to for me to respond to as I took part in the research project associated with the Encounters exhibition and was involved in the curation of Indigenous Australia – Enduring Civilisation at the British Museum. However I did not have any role in the Encounters exhibition itself. Robinson begins by stating that the dual mandate of museums – institutions that preserve, document and research collections as well as providing d…

  • Extended lives in global spaces

    Open AccessH MorphyARTICLEJournal of the Royal Anthropologica…2016Citada por: 1Referencias: 15

    The focus is on a recently developed Yolngu ritual, the memorial or memorial service, which celebrates the lives of Yolngu who have achieved a national reputation. Held before the burial ceremony, the memorial service is orientated 'both-ways' - to the outside as well as to the Yolngu world. Memorial services are analysed in the context of the articulation between Yolngu and the wider Australian society. A diachronically orientated analysis takes…

  • Indigenous Australia

    Open AccessH MorphyARTICLEMuseum Worlds2015

    Over the past few years I have been fortunate to be part of a team of people working on an exhibition at the British Museum. The curator of the exhibition is Gaye Sculthorpe, Curator of Oceania at the Museum. Lissant Bolton, Keeper of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, came up with the exhibition title, Indigenous Australia: enduring civilisation. The word civilization had been part of our discussions all along and her wording resolved any doubt w…

  • Relative Autonomy Revisited

    Open AccessFrances Morphy, H MorphyARTICLEAmerican Anthropologist2013Citada por: 4

    s response (this issue) to our arti- cle ("Anthropological Theory and Government Policy in Australia's Northern Territory: The Hegemony of the 'Mainstream'" [AA 115(2):174-187]) draws attention to complex issues of social theory that lie at the heart of anthropological and sociological discourse.Anthropology, through the use of concepts such as cultural relativism, cultural translation, value-creation processes, and systems of social organization…

  • Anthropological Theory and Government Policy in Australia's Northern Territory

    Open AccessFrances Morphy, H MorphyARTICLEAmerican Anthropologist2013Citada por: 24Referencias: 19

    In this article, we set up a dialogue between two theoretical frameworks for understanding the developing relationships between indigenous Australians and the encapsulating Australian society. We argue that the concept of "the intercultural" de-emphasizes the agency of Aboriginal people and the durability of their social relations and value orientations. We develop the concept of relative autonomy in apposition. Our primary focus is on the Yolngu…

  • Recursive and Iterative Processes in Australian Rock Art

    Open AccessH MorphyOTHERA Companion to Rock Art2012

    This chapter contains sections titled: Abstract Rock Art, Ancestors, and The Present The Past in the Present: Iterative and Recursive Practice Concluding Reflections Note References

  • Religion in Aboriginal Australia

    Max Charlesworth, H Morphy et al.

  • The Anthropology of Art

    H Morphy, Morgan Perkins

  • 'My dear Spencer'

    Derek John Mulvaney, H Morphy et al.

    Between 1894 and 1903, outback postmaster Frank Gillen wrote to the Melbourne University academic Baldwin Spencer. Gillen, a self-educated enthusiast, died in 1912, having partnered Spencer in pioneering fieldwork to record the culture and beliefs of the Aboriginal people. These letters provide a background to their books, which profoundly influenced theories on the development of human society. The letters shed light on race relations, social co…

  • The anthropology of art

    H MorphyCitada por: 11

    Anyone writing about the anthropology of art is eventually forced to confront the problem of how art is to be defined. In the recent past they may also have felt obliged to deal with the question of the label 'primitive' (see Gerbrands 1957, Anderson 1979, Layton 1991). In the case of this latter term, however, I am content to assume that the battle has been won in anthropology, if not in art history (cf. Rubin 1984: 6ff.) The addition of the lab…