Culturally-centred approaches to PMEL are an essential precondition or foundation to make your work truly localised and inclusive. In applying this approach, you may come across the term ‘crticial cultural competence’ so here are some ideas for how to apply it to your work.
It’s a multifaceted concept beyond just being aware of cultural differences; it involves reflection, deep inquiry about biases and privilege, and acts upon them. It represents a deep and reflective understanding of how culture shapes individuals, communities, and societies. At its core, critical cultural competence involves acknowledging that our own cultural lens can influence our perceptions, biases, and behaviours.
You can start by thinking about the many influences on your ways of thinking and interacting with the world around you, and try to place where in your cultures that behaviour comes from.
Critical cultural competence requires actively examining these biases and how they influence you – including how it can influence your PMEL work for the worse. It also involves actively seeking to understand, respect, and appreciate the diverse perspectives and experiences of others. This level of cultural competence also involves a willingness to challenge and confront systemic inequalities and injustices rooted in culture, advocating for social change and equity. It goes beyond surface-level cultural sensitivity and extends into a deeper commitment to dismantling barriers and promoting inclusivity, and anti-racism.
In applying it to PMEL, we can make our projects more relevant, localised, and sensitive to important contexts. It could alert us to ideas we had previously neglected because we assumed it would not arise in our data, such as the need for translators and sign language interpreters during feedback sessions with communities. I like it because it involves working with others to check each other’s privileges and biases, rather than being an individual process of self-reflection (which has its own challenges because we’re often unaware of our own biases, so a self-reflection is redundant!) If facilitated well, it can also build trust and respect in teams, and you can use these conversations to check each other’s and hold yourselves accountable to acting in culturally relevant ways.
Data collection
In a meaningful and respectful data collection process, tools should centre local customs, languages, and sensitivities. Another one to add in the ‘shouldn’t have to be said but sadly really does’! Your methods and tools are more likely to be accurate and applicable if they’re rooted in the ways your partners express themselves, rather than following your organisation or donor’s perspectives. Tailoring surveys, questionnaires, and interviews to the cultural context, plus offering them in all the languages and media relevant, is a good start.
Data sources
Embrace diversity in your data sources – another one in the category above! There is more than the binary of qualitative and quantitative here; think about bringing in arts-based and creative methods to make the process more interesting for participants – not to mention your own teams.
If you are working on a climate change mitigation project, a localised approach rooted in cultural practices could help you identify new ways to engage with the literal ecosystem, and speak to communities who are safeguarding threatened lands, for example. Open the space up for conversations with your teams and partners, and think about your audience and the best way to share data with them. Engage with underrepresented or marginalized groups within the community, ensuring that their voices are heard and their perspectives are centred, so your research can be all the more effective.
Cultural Lens in Data Analysis
When analyzing data, don’t overlook the cultural factors that may influence outcomes. Consider how cultural norms, traditions, and practices may affect the success or challenges of your project.
Engage your local partners and communities in mapping this out, since you will not know everything – and nor will any one organisation. Use these diverse sources to triangulate and verify the findings of this cultural analysis, and find common areas of importance where you can reasonably engage. Recognizing these nuances can lead to more targeted and effective interventions.
Feedback and Adaptation
Cultural competence is not a one-time effort but an ongoing process. Encourage continuous reflection, learning, and adaptation within your team – and encourage this between all partners in the project. Seek feedback from community members and stakeholders, and use this information to refine your processes. Build relationships of trust and openness during the project so that it’s clear you are genuinely interested in feedback, and are not looking for validation of your findings, but to challenge them.
