Making the Intangible Count? Metrification of the Value of Culture
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Publication Date
2025
Description
This chapter confronts increasing bureaucratisation of culture through well-intended but potentially recolonising insistence by government departments for quantifiable proof of cultural impact on First Nations wellbeing. We acknowledge the contemporary paradox in which those for whom culture ‘counts’ are rarely those who drive its metrification, preferring to invest limited resources in cultural practice, preservation, rejuvenation, and transmission. Indigenous responses to failed policies of normalisation and reductively narrow evaluation frameworks seek both co-design of policies and programs, and the incorporation of First Nations complexity in evaluation. We examine the tension between western bureaucratic preoccupation to measure and evaluate the impact of culture, and Indigenous responses within this intercultural space via analysis of Indigenous led studies at national and regional levels developing cultural outcomes impact frameworks, grounded in Indigenous cultural values. This chapter explores the dangers of failing to identify the distinction between valuing cultural difference and developing Indigenous cultural indices. We argue these dangers are magnified in the absence of proper and respectful relationships between First Nations Australians, self-determining First Nations institutions and organisations, and the settler state. The case for meticulous adherence overseen by the most senior staff of non-Indigenous entities to all principles of Indigenous Data Sovereignty is presented.
Keywords
wellbeing, metrification, culture, First Nations organisations, data sovereignty
Disciplines
Arts and Humanities
Link to Publisher Version (URL)
Recommended Citation
Thorburn, K., Ward, J., & Kinnane, S. (2025). Making the Intangible Count? Metrification of the Value of Culture. Retrieved from https://researchonline.nd.edu.au/nulungu_books/3
