Identifying the Evaluative Impulse in Local Culture: Insights From West African Proverbs

Abstract

Attention to cultural competence has significantly increased in the human services over the last two decades. Evaluators have long had similar concerns and have made a more concentrated effort in recent years to adapt evaluation methodology to varying cultural contexts. Little of this literature, however, has focused on the extent to which local cultures themselves already contain habits and patterns of evaluative thought that may serve as a basis for such work and for fuller stakeholder participation. This article explores the evaluative instincts expressed in West African proverbs against a background of related research. Consideration of the explicit message and latent meanings of a set of chosen proverbs suggests that the cultures in question are rich in evaluative perspectives. Directions for further research are proposed. © The Author(s) 2012.