New Directions in Peacebuilding Evaluation

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Description

In this landmark collection, the voices of pathmakers and innovators in peacebuilding evaluation are assembled to provide new direction for the field. Stock is taken of the development and challenges of engaging in the real-time learning that evaluation requires. Best practices for overcoming challenges are discussed and critiqued, as well as some of the basic assumptions guiding the field. New means of gathering information and understanding conflict processes are offered and examined. To continue to evolve and strengthen peacebuilding practices and professionalism, multiple calls are issued for collaborative learning and a field-wide effort at community inquiry.

Reviews

With this volume, one gets the sense of a discipline coming of age; it articulates a maturing of the field of scholarship around peace-building and conflict engagement/transformation/resolution. The work includes contributions from scholars and practitioners who propose strategies for determining what works, why, and how in a complex field that has often seen itself as exceptional, resisting efforts to set realizable goals for--and implementing processes for achieving--assessment. Anchoring chapters by the editor lay out the groundwork for evaluation (types and purposes) and make a plea for building a "community of inquiry for public, shared, and cumulative learning." Other contributions review the different contexts and modalities for evaluation, and different evaluative tools and frameworks applicable in these contexts--all in the interest of building knowledge from experience. Overall, the work contributes to clarity--conceptually and operationally--for an emerging field that is starting to look at itself, and indicates ways the field can build both problem-solving and theory-building research. It will be of interest to practitioners and scholars, as well as to students of social science methodology. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.

Author Bio

Tamra Pearson dEstre is Henry R. Luce Professor of Conflict Resolution in the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and has co-directed DUs Conflict Resolution Institute since 2002.