en
Book chapter
English

The danger of the single story: Evaluation, ethics and the Global South

Published inEthics for Evaluation: Beyond “doing no harm” to “tackling bad” and “doing good”, Editors Rob D. van den Berg, Penny Hawkins, Nicoletta Stame, p. Ch
PublisherNew York : Routledge
Collection
  • Comparative Policy Evaluation; 27
First online date2021-12-31
Abstract

This chapter tackles the alluring narratives of the powerful that conform to the dictum of “the winner writes the history”. In a world that is increasingly unequal and full of injustices, with economic exploitation seen as necessary for development, Ofir and Gallagher focus our attention on the ethical consequences of a dominant narrative on development, and how the world has been shaped in this way. They present this as an issue that evaluators need to be aware of and engage with, as otherwise both they and their evaluations become willfully or unwittingly part of the continuation of injustice and exploitation. In their view, culturally responsive evaluations should emphasize values-informed practices that intersect with the interests of the Global South. This assumes the shared interests between societies and between people and nature and opposes these to the interests of the Global North, the “developers”. Ofir and Gallagher report on the experience of the South-to-South Evaluation (S2SE) initiative that was initiated to elevate and further advance the substantial, yet still under-utilized, indigenous knowledge, capacities and resources of the Global South, and to ensure that evaluation in all its forms effectively serves and supports countries and societies in the South in their development and cooperation efforts by combining the most appropriate knowledge and methods from around the world. They see this as a necessary step to enable evaluation to follow the ethical imperatives of tackling bad, doing no harm and doing good.

eng
Keywords
  • Sustainability
  • Transformations
  • Ethics
  • Evaluation
  • Development
  • Local and indigenous knowledge
Citation (ISO format)
OFIR, Zenda, GALLAGHER, Louise. The danger of the single story: Evaluation, ethics and the Global South. In: Ethics for Evaluation: Beyond “doing no harm” to “tackling bad” and “doing good”. New York : Routledge, 2021. p. Ch. (Comparative Policy Evaluation) doi: 10.4324/9781003247234
Main files (1)
Book chapter (Submitted version)
accessLevelPublic
Identifiers
ISBN9781003247234
208views
106downloads

Technical informations

Creation01/13/2022 4:27:00 PM
First validation01/13/2022 4:27:00 PM
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