Gil Hardwick's Page

Here in Australia we practice what we call 'outreach', which is very much concerned with reaching out to people especially those at risk and intervene early before their situation deteriorates, and we are thus able to keep them on track towards a healthy and happy life.

To me outreach is the very antithesis of neglect, and I know very well how often one is criticised for it, but at the end of the day ethics would suggest that doing good is better than doing no harm in the world.…
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[I decided to post this here as well, from colleague Hameedullah's page, since the core discussion is so centrally important. It is no mere chance that he too lists himself as an anthropologist.]

I am inclined to argue that poverty is simply the Yin aspect of wealth, where the question becomes one of balance. It appears popular in the West to pursue the Yang aspect exclusively, without considering the harm done.

One of my reasons for arguing fro… Continue

Sitting here ruminating; chewing the intellectual cud so to speak, and thinking to myself what a nice bunch of people there are here willing to come together and to offer themselves collaboratively to a purpose. That takes quite a lot of humility, but no less courage, or singularity of purpose.

It has always been fundamentally frustrating to me that so very many people when they want something done go running to government, or para-government or pseudo-government, rather than to their p… Continue

My thoughts here are primarily swimming around the eternal issue of communication and organisation, whether across vast distances or right here in our own living rooms.

This may perhaps be a typically Australian preoccupation, except that nowadays we have coming on stream obviously intelligent, well-informed and well-educated people from apparently so far away as Kyrgyzstan, which is in fact far closer to us than anywhere in the n…

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Here I would like to invite a meditation and discourse on a quote from Blaise Pascal, that being; I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.

One of the things I notice most uncomfortably among children is that they do not suffer being ignored, but clammer for attention. In clammering for attention they will do the most outrageous things.

What I find uncomfortable about… Continue