Collaborative, Participatory & Empowerment Evaluation
Eve Pinsker, PhD
Clinical Assistant Professor
University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Eve Pinsker, PhD
Clinical Assistant Professor
University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Kim Falk, n/a
Evaluation Specialist
Allegheny County Dept of Human Services
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Location: White River Ballroom E
Abstract Information: This Birds of A Feather networking session is for anthropologists working as evaluators and also evaluators and evaluation sponsors interested in learning more about Evaluation Anthropology and how anthropological theories and methods can inform evaluation practice. People with all levels of anthropological training and experience are welcome to come and share experience, questions, and concerns about evaluation work. The Evaluation Anthropology Interest Group is sponsored by NAPA, the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology and meets at both the American Evaluation Association and the American Anthropological Association. We will use this time to share professional development challenges and opportunities for people with training in anthropology who are pursuing evaluation careers. We will also discuss the relevance of anthropological training to this year's theme, The Power of Story, since story gathering, the interpretation of stories, and analysis across a story corpus, speak to the strengths of anthropology in such arenas as material culture (e.g. evaluation utilizing stories in the context of historic preservation work), organizational culture (stories as a means of evaluating organization learning and change initiatives), and evaluation of change in complex systems (story gathering and analysis as one route to identifying patterns underlying complexity).
Relevance Statement: While anthropologists such as David Fetterman have been leading figures in evaluation for the last 30 years, recognition of evaluation anthropology as a subfield and discussion among anthropologists practicing as evaluators about how our discipline’s methods and theory specifically influences our approach to evaluation is about eighteen years old. In 2005 the Bulletin of the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology (the NAPA Bulletin, now renamed the Annals of Anthropological Practice) published Evaluation Anthropology: Introducing an Emerging Sub-Field, edited by Mary Odell Butler and Jacqueline Copeland Carson. The Evaluation Anthropology Interest Group was also formed within NAPA, the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology (a section of the American Anthropological Association) at about the same time. Our conceptual frameworks and methods allow us to make some unique contributions to expanding evaluators’ understandings of topics such as cultural diversity and insider vs. outsider perspectives and the differences between ethnographic approaches to data collection and analysis and more narrowly focused, less immersion/participatory based qualitative methods. With the publication of Mary Odell Butler's 2015 Evaluation Anthropology textbook, Evaluation: A Cultural Systems Approach (Routledge), our field has matured and the number of university courses offered has increased, mainly as part of applied anthropology programs. The most common pathway to evaluation anthropology practice, however, is still through networking and mentoring of anthropologists looking to find a way their training can be meaningfully applied in a professional context by those who have already found such work in the evaluation field. NAPA has a mentor program that includes anthropologists working as evaluators; we use the Birds of a Feather gathering to inform students and others looking for career help about this and other resources, as well as provide an opportunity for those who come to the meeting to share their own resources, knowledge, and perspectives.