aes19 International Evaluation Conference

Erin Blake (Independent Consultant), Eva Sarr (Center for Multicultural Program Evaluation)

We need to talk.

About racism, xenophobia, privilege and cultural value differences. And their implications for evaluation practice in and around Australia.

Populism, xenophobia and nationalism are on the rise globally. Fuelled by a scepticism towards multiculturalism, globalisation and human mobility; increasingly polarised politics; click-bait news media; and, a ubiquitous social media presence. In extreme instances, these social attitudes and structural barriers have had lethal consequences.

Racism, xenophobia, privilege and a lack of understanding of diverse cultural values are problematic for evaluators working on community-oriented projects, particularly those that seek to promote social cohesion and inclusion. They are also critical for evaluators working to support international aid and development processes.

This session will facilitate a respectful and honest intercultural dialogue on race, xenophobia, cultural value differences and privilege. In doing so the session will ‘unpack the rainbow boxes’ and start a conversation on issues that many find confronting and difficult to discuss, but which can affect our day-to-day work, profession and communities in a multitude of ways. Through this dialogue, we will better understand the issues at hand for contemporary evaluation practice – including unconscious bias, understanding our own values and structural discrimination – and begin developing useful strategies to better recognise and address these issues in the Australian context.

The dialogue will elicit the views and experiences of participants. Facilitators will draw on extensive Australian and international experiences, literature on culturally responsive and equitable evaluation, case studies, and feminist critiques; to elicit the points at which power and cultural values intersect with our evaluation practice (i.e. at the funding, motivation, design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, dissemination and communication stages) and how we can become more culturally responsive in our own work.

This is an important and topical issue that will interest practitioners, commissioners and consumers of evaluation.