Etic constructs are accounts, descriptions, and analyses expressed in terms of the conceptual schemes and categories regarded as meaningful and appropriate by the community of scientific observers. (130)
Such is the definition of ‘etic constructs’ written by James Lett, who tries to synthesize a workable definition of etic and emic from the divergent and yet similar definitions and intents of the original users of the terms, Kenneth Pike and Marvin Harris. I am finding Lett’s article in an edited volume, Emics and Etics: The Insider/Outsider Debate (1990) to be both insightful and somewhat frustrating. Consider this paragraph, which deals with etics:
All human knowledge is relative, it is unavoidably relative to the capacities, needs, interests, desires, and goals of human beings (see Lett, 1987, p.24). Absolute objectivity is unrealizable, and absolute knowledge is unattainable. All of that, however, is beside the point. No one is claiming that an etic approach to knowledge will yield absolute certainty; instead, I am claiming that the scientific standards of rational inquiry will yield better and more reliable knowledge than any other epistemological approach yet devised, and that certainly includes any and all epistemological perspectives based upon faith, revelation, and/or intuition. As human beings, we must accept the responsibility to pursue knowledge on our own; there is absolutely no reason to believe that reliable knowledge will ever be revealed to us from any source. The question, then, becomes one of how best to pursue knowledge, and no path to knowledge can be criticized because it is imperfect; it can only be criticized because it is less perfect than the alternatives. I submit that the epistemological standards of etic knowledge are superior (more reliable, more useful, more predictive, and more self-correcting) than any other set of epistemological standards offered by anyone in any place at any time. The only effective counterargument that I am prepared to consider would be a compelling counterexample. (135)
And earlier he mentions,
No other standard yet developed for the analysis of human affairs incorporates a self-correcting guard against factual error and ethnocentric bias. (134)
It seemed to me, as I was reading, that Lett was doing very well to remember that ‘All human knowledge is relative’…’to the capacities, needs, interests, desires, and goals of human beings’ (emphasis his). The question I would then think needs asking is, what are the needs and interests, etc, of ‘the community of scientific observers’?
He also explained that ‘the epistemological standards of etic knowledge are superior’ because they are more useful. This, I think asks the question, useful for what?
In answering these questions, I rather suspect that etic concepts and constructions turn out to have an ‘ethnocentric bias’ toward the scientific tribe. (Or a particular scientific tribe, as lumping all together would make some strange bedfellows.) It is this claim that it is not biased, that etic constructs are, as Lett puts elsewhere, ‘observer-independent’, that has me anxious. It is one thing to say that a particular viewpoint is useful or more helpful for developing understanding (helping us make sense of the world). As Lett says, ‘Ultimately, the value of emics and etics must lie in their utility, or the extent to which they contribute to our understanding of sociocultural phenomena’ (139). In that case it would be quite hard to argue that the scientific, etic view isn’t superior in many respects to many other systems. It is quite another, I think, to claim that it is not biased, because as my questions above point out, such constructs cannot be without particular intentions and ideas of usefulness. Thus Lett provides some good insight into the nature of scientific research and understanding, but I think fails to see that such understanding is in fact based on particular premises, desires, and beliefs about what is useful understanding.
