The performativity of monitoring and evaluation in international development interventions: Building a dialogical case study of evidence-making that situates ‘the general’

Abstract

The dominance of high-income countries in ‘generalised’ evidence-making is increasingly recognised as a barrier to advancing understandings of social change processes in international development. Building more equitable and collaborative institutionalised relationships with localities is therefore emphasised. This paper details how a dialogical case study of evidence-making in international development was developed through the single-case ethnography of a youth sexual behaviour change and empowerment intervention in Tanzania. It illustrates how dialogical theorising was applied in both data collection and analyses towards advancing understandings of the ethical and dynamic Self–Other interdependencies through which evidence is made and communicated. The analyses highlight the performativity of monitoring and evaluation activities: how networks of relations perform the logic of rigid predictability that underpins the design and funding of international development interventions. The non-dialogical and inauthentic nature of these relations are found to foster distrust, holding the potential to undermine the ‘empowering’ goals of the intervention overall. ‘The international’ in evidence-making is therefore situated as a cultural location that lacks relevance in contexts such as Tanzania where changeability trumps predictability. Fostering equities therefore demands attending to colonialities regarding language use, the authority given to artefacts, and the sociohistorical and accumulative contextualisations of distrust.