Concept
Emic and etic
Overview
Emic () and etic () refer to two kinds of field research carried out in anthropology, folkloristics, linguistics, and the social and behavioral sciences, and viewpoints obtained from them.
The emic approach adopts an insider's perspective, which looks at the beliefs, values, and practices of a particular culture from the perspective of the people who live within it. This approach aims to understand the cultural meaning and significance of a particular behavior or practice, as it is understood by the people who engage in it.
The etic approach adopts an outsider's perspective, which looks at a culture from the perspective of an outside observer or researcher. This approach tends to focus on the observable behaviors and practices of a culture, and aims to understand them in terms of their functional or evolutionary significance. The etic approach often involves the use of standardized measures and frameworks to compare different cultures and may involve the use of concepts and theories from other disciplines, such as psychology or sociology.
The emic and etic approaches each have their own strengths and limitations, and each can be useful in understanding different aspects of culture and behavior. Some anthropologists argue that a combination of both approaches is necessary for a complete understanding of a culture, while others argue that one approach may be more appropriate depending on the specific research question being addressed.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
What is called inner is simply that which does not connect with others--which is not capable of free and full communication. What is termed spiritual culture has usually been futile, with something rotten about it, just because it has been conceived as a thing which a man might have internally--and therefore exclusively. What one is as a person is what one is as associated with others, in a free give and take of…
John Dewey, Democracy and Education
States what Emic and etic is.
Yet those who know the habits of the continent of Europe are aware how apparently small a motive often outweighs the desire of money getting, even in the operations which have money getting for their direct object. The more highly the science of ethology is cultivated, and the better the diversities of individual and national character are understood, the smaller, probably, will the number of propositions become…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Emic and etic is.
Hence the suspicion with which students of experimental science often regard the theoretical constructions of their confrères of the sciences that deal with the past. The origin of the races of men, of man himself, of life, of species, of the planet; the hypotheses of anthropologists, of archeologists, of students of 'higher criticism'--all these are matters which the men of the laboratory often regard with a…
Henri Poincaré, The Foundations of Science
Close in meaning to Emic and etic; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- Belief
- Personality
- Sociology
- Culture
- Linguistics
- Psychology
- Phoneme
- Psychoanalysis
- Myth
- Religion
- Social science
- Anthropologist
- Value (ethics)
- Carl Jung
- Cultural anthropology
- China
- Anthropology
- Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy)
- Epistemology
Place in the tradition
Part of New Age.