Cases Integrating Ethnography and Evaluation

The field of evaluation needs more empirical examples that illustrate how to conduct transformative work. This text delivers just that! It offers rich case studies that highlight how ethnographic methods can illuminate both individual and collective experiences, as well as the complex social systems and cultural contexts that shape them. The concrete examples of community engagement, participatory approaches, and the interplay of power and privilege make this book an invaluable resource for advancing more authentic, equitable, and transformative evaluation practice.

-- Jori N. Hall, President's Distinguished Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Illinois Chicago

Strongly recommended as a guide to ethical evaluations that honor participants’ perspectives. Large and small models from several countries, curated by editors with deep understanding of ethnography as well as evaluation.

-- Kathryn Anderson-Levitt, Professor Emerita of Anthropology, University of Michigan–Dearborn

Goodnight and Hopson’s book captures the dynamics of culture, democracy, justice, and reciprocity across diverse community and program contexts, interweaving transformative, intersectional and comparative themes and bringing them to life with rich case examples. Chapters focus on arts-based approaches informed by social equity, case-based pedagogy, Indigenous methodologies and critical collaborative ethnography, all of which foreground questions of positionality, power, democracy, and ethics. Scholars and practitioners will find much in these pages to inspire dialogue around reconceptualizing evaluation, and as a teacher of evaluation I will be including these readings in my undergraduate and graduate courses.

-- Jill Anne Chouinard, PhD, Director and Professor, School of Public Administration, University of Victoria

Cases Integrating Ethnography and Evaluation: Making Transformative, Intersectional, and Comparative Connections is one of the most significant contributions to ethnographic approaches to evaluation since Ethnography in Educational Evaluation. This work elegantly and forcefully addresses equity and social justice issues. It is also international in scope. Goodnight and Hopson have produced a transformative, intersectional, and comparative tour de force that advances the field in profound and meaningful ways.

-- David Fetterman, Fetterman & Associates, Claremont Graduate University, and Pacifica Graduate Insti