While using different methods in the field, we are bound to get results. However how these results are viewed by the researcher is an important question to ponder upon. Here the approach of looking at research from an emic or an etic perspective comes in. If the perspective is presented from the culture studied then it is called the emic approach and if the perspective is presented from the observer’s point of view then it is called the etic approach.
To elaborate on each, emic is that perspective which indicates the behaviour and norms of people of a particular culture which they consider to be significant. It is how they perceive them, how they view and classify their lived experiences, why they do things in a particular way, visualise, describe and rationalise phenomena in distinct ways. The emic perspective is what we may call as the insider’s view. To know emic perspectives the researcher spends time with people, observe them, engages herself/himself in their daily activities etc. To produce a rich ethnography with cultural details, the anthropologist has to put in a good deal of effort to achieve the emic perspective.
The etic perspective which is not of the culture studied but of the researcher, are explanations which are given by her/him about the behaviour of that culture. Etic descriptions are also built from conversations and discussions between the researcher and others from the anthropology community offering their own understanding of the culture studied. These descriptions are typically scientifically based and are apprised by historical, political and many other kinds of investigations. Advocates of the etic perspective believe that members of a community are not in a position to consider their everyday activities from an objective standpoint. However it cannot be wholly accepted that cultures would behave realistically while being observed by an outsider (the researcher). The behaviour depicted may not be what the culture actually does privately, in the absence of an observer. Hence in etic description this may act as an issue in providing valid data.
The terms emic and etic were coined by linguist, Kenneth Pike in the year 1954. He derived these terms from the linguistic terms phonemic and phonetic and suggested they be used as a methodological key to understand human social behaviour and human culture. In other words he proposed the conversion of linguistic tools to social research tools to understand human behaviour. Later anthropologists, Ward Goodenough and Marvin Harris also advocated these two methods of studying humans with the intention to learn about particular cultural meanings based on particular cultural beliefs and practices. Thus based on the way a researcher plans to study a society, community or culture, s/he can accordingly make use of the etic or emic approach, depending on which method suits her/him best.
Second Answer
A unique feature of anthropology is its emphasis on viewing another culture from the perspective of an insider. From the beginning, anthropologists have made a distinction between the emic approach and the etic approach. The terms emic and etic were coined by linguist Kenneth Pike in 1954. For the research purpose anthropologists borrowed these terms from linguistics. The emic approach (derived from the word phonemic) refers to an insider’s view, which seeks to describe another culture in terms of the categories, concepts and perceptions of the people being studied (Ferraro and Andreatta, 2010).
There is a fine line between the ethnographer’s insider and outsider point of view. The fundamental rule of an ethnographer is to place him in an emic perspective.
By contrast, the etic approach (derived from the word phonetic) refers to an outsider’s view, in which anthropologists use their own perceptions and concepts to describe the culture under investigation. The terms ‘emic’ and ‘etic’ were not used in ethnography until the 1950s, Malinowski first defined the emic perspective in his functional theory without using the word.
For an anthropologist an “emic” approach means to adopt a perspective “from inside” i.e. to make a description of the behaviour, customs, ideas, beliefs (conscious or not), in terms of an individual who behaves or has ideas similar to that of the subject. The anthropologist tries to put himself in his subject’s shoes, in order to understand how he conceives things. In
contrast, an “etic” approach means an external description of the same behavioural or conceptual elements, “from the outside”, i.e. in objective terms, from the perspective of the researcher, and using concepts considered to be universal and culturally neutral (Bãlan, 2011).
A radically emic approach was taken by a group of U.S. anthropologists (known as ethnoscientists) during the 1950s and 1960s. In an attempt to obtain a more realistic understanding of another culture, these scholars insisted on the insider approach. More recently in the school of interpretive of cultural anthropology in America has strongly supported the emic approach in anthropological research. Clifford Geertz and others who belong to the interpretive school hold that because human behaviour stems from the way people perceive and classify the world around them, the only legitimate strategy is the emic, or insider, approach to cultural description (Ferraro and Andreatta, 2010).
Romanian anthropologist Gheorghiþã Geanã also supported the emic approach. He writes (2008), “Emic designates facts, beliefs, attitudes, understood in the way they are real and meaningful for members of the studied culture”, while “etic designates phenomena that are identified, described and assessed independently of the position towards them of the
members of the studied culture” (Bãlan, 2011).
“Most often, ethnographers include both emic and etic perspectives in their research and writing. They first uncover a studied people’s understanding of what they do and why and then develop additional explanations for the behavior based on anthropological theory and analysis. Both perspectives are important, and it can be challenging to move back and forth between the two. Nevertheless, that is exactly what good ethnographers must do” (Nelson, 2018).
At the opposite end of the debate are the cultural materialists, best represented by Marvin Harris. Starting from the assumption that material conditions determine thoughts and behaviour (not the other way round), cultural materialist emphasize the viewpoint of the ethnographer, not the native informant. There is no consensus on this issue: researcher must make a decision about which approach to take when doing research (Ferraro and Andreatta, 2010). For the last six decades there has been an ongoing debate among the anthropologists regarding the suitability of the approach to the scientific study of comparative culture