Abstract
Evaluation warriorship, as defined by ¡Milwaukee Evaluation! Inc., links the practice of evaluation learning, reflection, and storytelling to the evaluator’s social responsibility as a warrior for justice. Unchecked global capitalism has led to extreme economic and racial injustice, undermined democracies, and accelerated environmental catastrophe. This paper argues that more evaluation warriorship is needed to resist this particular system of oppression. It presents examples of how evaluators reproduce neoliberal logic (e.g., in landscape analyses and collective impact assessments), which ultimately undermines transformative change. Evaluator reflexivity questions are proposed to incite change within the field and to help individual evaluators and evaluation teams unpack neoliberalism in their own practice. Evaluation education should include instruction on the effects of neoliberalism and how it shapes both programs and evaluation approaches. Future research should expand the body of knowledge of how neoliberalism has impacted the field of evaluation, support the development of an anti-capitalist praxis, and offer new opportunities for evaluation resistance.
Highlights
Published: 14 February 2021The field of program evaluation is undergoing a transformation, one that is inextricably linked to healing and resistance
If we harness the full potential of our influence and power, we can help secure a fundamentally different society, one that is firmly rooted in social justice and celebrates the full scope of our humanity and the sacredness of this planet.” —¡Milwaukee Evaluation! Inc. (2020)
Program evaluators engaging in critical, transformative, decolonizing, feminist, and culturally responsive evaluation (Hall 2020; Sielbeck-Bowen et al 2002; Smith 2012; Symonette et al 2020) have gained prominence, elevating multiple, shared, and regenerative threads centered on our collective responsibility toward liberation and social justice for all
Summary
The field of program evaluation is undergoing a transformation, one that is inextricably linked to healing and resistance. Program evaluators engaging in critical, transformative, decolonizing, feminist, and culturally responsive evaluation (Hall 2020; Sielbeck-Bowen et al 2002; Smith 2012; Symonette et al 2020) have gained prominence, elevating multiple, shared, and regenerative threads centered on our collective responsibility toward liberation and social justice for all. Evaluation practice, and several field-level resistance opportunities, including a series of reflexive questions for individual evaluators and evaluation teams to enhance the advocacy arm of their evaluation practice
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