From: "termite-AT-worker.com" <termite-AT-worker.com> To: bhaskar-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 17:00:44 +0000 Subject: Re: BHA: People's ideas I'm just a civilian lurker on this list, but it seems to me that the following few paragraphs from Marvin Harris's _Cultural Materialism_ (1979) might be useful at this point: "Since both the observer's point of view and the participants' point of view can be presented objectively or subjectively, depending on the adequacy of the empirical observations employed by the observer, we cannot use the words 'objective' and 'subjective' to denote the operation in question without creating a great deal of confusion. To avoid this confusion, many anthropologists have begun to use the terms 'emic' and 'etic,' which were first introduced by the anthropological linguist Kenneth Pike in his book _Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior_. "Emic operations have as their hallmark the elevation of the native informant to the status of ultimate judbe of the adequacy of the observer's descriptions and analyses. The test of the adequacy of the emic analyses is their ability to generate statements the native accepts as real, meaningful, or appropriate. In carrying out research in the emic mode, the observer attempts to acquire a knowledge of the categories and rules one must know in order to think and act as a native. One attempts to learn, for example, what rules lie behind the use of the same kin term for mother and mother's sister among the Bathonga; or one attempts to learn when it is appropriate to shame one's guests among the Kwakiutl. "Etic operations have as their hallmark the elevation of observers to the status of ultimate judges of the categories and concepts used in descriptions and analyses. The test of the adequacy of etic accounts is simply their ability to generate scientifically productive theories about the causes of sociocultural differences and similarities. Rather than employ the concepts that are necessarily real, meaningful, and appropriate from the native point of view, the observer is free to use alien categories and rules derived from the data language of science. Frequently, etic operations involve the measurement and juxtaposition of activities and events the native informants may find inappropriate or meaningless." (p. 32) And this, which distinguishes Harris's position from Pike's: "In the cultural materialist research strategy, etic analysis is not a steppingstone to the discovery of emic structures, but to the discovery of etic structures. The intent is neither the convert etics to emics nor emics to etics, but rather to describe both and if possible to explain one in terms of the other [i.e., emics in terms of etics]." (p. 36) Of course, if this seems irrelevant to the current discussion, please ignore it. --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005