Etic Research Research Articles

Glimpses of embodied utopias, why Moroccan and Swiss farmers engage in alternative agricultures

AbstractGeographies of food are not only shaped by political economic forces but also by individuals who resist dominant ways of subjectivation. Based on ethnographic research on forty-seven agroecological farms in Switzerland and Morocco, this article proposes a philosophical reconsideration of the role of utopia, hope and enchantment in shaping people’s actions. It contributes to the understanding of the emotional, spiritual and embodied experiences that lead farmers to engage in alternative agricultures at the margins of state planning and agro-industry. The adoption of an etic research approach to ‘alternativity’ allows me to capture ‘quiet alternativities’, or farming experiences with beneficial socio-ecological outcomes but which are not represented as alternative or disruptive by the farmers themselves. This is especially important for Swiss and Moroccan farmers who do not always identify with a social movement or express any explicit opposition to agricultural policies and the dominant agri-food system, although their practices may effectively incorporate an alternative experience from where to envision different agri-cultures. Drawing from diverse conceptions of utopia, hope and enchantment, I unravel different manifestations of utopia as mental creations of ‘no-where’ and as embodied experiences of ‘no-when’. This enables me to attend to ‘quiet expressions’ of hope manifested not in speech but in daily practices and to discuss farmers’ motives to engage in alternative agricultures, despite a sometimes bleak outlook. I theorise these multiple experiences as ‘glimpses of utopias’ to explore the embodied and embedded dimensions of utopia to broaden what utopia can mean beyond purely speculative thinking.

The Case for Studying Non-Muslim Islams

Abstract In this article we define a new concept that has not previously been theorized: non-Muslim Islam. We argue that theories and methodologies within Islamic studies produce a hierarchy between Muslim and non-Muslim productions of Islam, prioritizing the first. However, this article highlights that Islam may be produced for other purposes than belief in a deity; Islam may for example be important in producing non-Muslim identity, politics, aesthetics, narratives, etc. We therefore argue the case for studying non-Muslim Islam, because: 1) Non-Muslim Islams play an important role in Euro-American societies and are therefore interesting in and of themselves; 2) Non-Muslim Islams have a significant impact on Muslim Islams, and thus, we will not understand Muslim Islams without a clear understanding of non-Muslim Islams; 3) It is a way of insisting on an etic research epistemology. The article ends with a discussion of ethical and strategic benefits of adopting this approach.

“A healthy outside starts from the inside”: A matter of sustainable consumption behavior in Italy and Pakistan

AbstractThe aim of this research is to determine people's motives when purchasing organic food and how these motives are moderated by price sensitivity and ethical concerns in a cross‐cultural setting. A highly structured questionnaire was used to collect the data from 673 Italian and 594 Pakistani consumers, using the convenience sampling technique. Based on the etic research approach, the measurement invariance tests were performed, and data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results indicate that environmental concerns and health‐consciousness are significant predictors of subjective norms and purchase attitudes among Italian consumers. Food safety concern proved the strongest predictor of purchase attitude and perceived behavioral control among Pakistani consumers. The results also confirm the moderating role of ethical concerns and price sensitivity in buying organic food in both cultures. In terms of originality, this study fills significant gaps in the literature, particularly regarding the roles of attitude, behavioral control, and subjective norms in consumer buying motives and purchasing intentions in cross‐cultural studies but more importantly, the results validate that consumer concerns across the globe are related to the Sustainability Development Goals and the U.N. 2030 agenda, which aptly provides a blue print for the development and developmental goals and concerns across nations.

From user insights to user foresights: Applying video-based ethnographic narratives and user innovation in NPD

•Video-based ethnographic narratives is an advanced ethnographic mode for user innovation and user foresights.•This mode adopts both an emic and an etic research perspective that complement each other.•User “logos”, “ethos”, “pathos” and “topos” are the antecedents for ordinary user innovation.

Delineating problems faced by artisans of Rajasthan: a case of emic-etic-emic analysis of the customer perspective

We explore the challenges of the handicraft industry by delineating the difficulties faced by the artisans involved in handicraft sector through urban haats. Data was collected from 500 customers visiting various haats known as prime spots for ethnic handicrafts in the urban city of New Delhi, India. The study attempts to understand Indian handicrafts from an ethnic and urban perspective. We present the work by combining emic and etic research approaches. It was found hands-on labour work, lack of skill; licensing and other regulations along with the standard supply chain have a significant effect on decisions associated with participation in haats. We recommend identifying talent from the grassroots level and preserving local arts and culture by promoting the same at the global level. Vocational training, financial support, education, industry-wide encouragement, and authentic distribution channels are some proposed ways to meet the potential of the said sector.

Delineating problems faced by artisans of Rajasthan: A case of emic-etic-emic analysis of the customer perspective

We explore the challenges of the handicraft industry by delineating the difficulties faced by the artisans involved in handicraft sector through urban haats. Data was collected from 500 customers visiting various haats known as prime spots for ethnic handicrafts in the urban city of New Delhi, India. The study attempts to understand Indian handicrafts from an ethnic and urban perspective. We present the work by combining emic and etic research approaches. It was found hands-on labour work, lack of skill; licensing and other regulations along with the standard supply chain have a significant effect on decisions associated with participation in haats. We recommend identifying talent from the grassroots level and preserving local arts and culture by promoting the same at the global level. Vocational training, financial support, education, industry-wide encouragement, and authentic distribution channels are some proposed ways to meet the potential of the said sector.

“Am I as extended as you say I am?” Consumer’s emic perspectives on the extended self

Although the extended self-construct has been widely investigated in consumer research, it has inspired relatively few critiques. Moreover, there has been little research which directly assesses consumers’ own emic perspectives on the extended self. Here, an empirical investigation is reported which explicitly solicits consumers’ own ideas and hermeneutically considers them in relation to etic researcher theory. The findings indicate a major theoretical blind spot: not only do consumers differ in the polysemy, that is, the various meanings and discourses they apply to the extended self but also that marketing theory should be revised to reflect this lack of universal understanding.

The Emic-Etic-Emic Research Cycle

This article discusses the role of both emic (developing culture specific concepts) and etic (applying concepts across cultures) research in the international management literature. We propose a more comprehensive research cycle that can provide researchers with a deeper understanding of the context in under-researched countries. Specifically, we propose that the combination of emic and etic research approaches, in an emic-etic-emic cycle, is the best way to disaggregate contextual issues in organizational research, particularly when dealing with human issues in management. Such a cycle, we argue, provides a deeper understanding of the context in under-researched countries.

Cross-national work–life research: common misconceptions and pervasive challenges

ABSTRACTWhile cross-national work-life research is a flourishing field of research, but a recent one, it is relatively recent as national context had been the missing ‘elephant in the room’ of work–life research for decades. Based on the keynote talk I gave at the 2015 Community, Work and Family conference in Malmö, Sweden, this research note highlights three pervasive challenges which I believe need to be discussed in our community of scholars, practitioners and policy-makers so that our research makes the strongest possible impact for individuals and organisations: (1) educating practitioners and policy-makers on the structuring impact that public and employer policies have on individual so-called private work–life decisions; (2) analyzing the inequalities of access to these policies within each country, which are often masked by simplified country-level comparisons and (3) finding innovative ways to combine ambitious etic research designs with in-depth emic understanding of local cultures.

Epistemological inclusiveness in researching the African American community

African American communities have experienced negative effects from a history of medical abuse, lack of proper research procedures, and misinterpretations of study findings because of racism. These past injustices have led to a mistrust of research and researchers. This paper focuses on how some methodological challenges, in a study funded by a National Institutes of Health grant on two low-income African American communities in Kentucky, were mediated through the collaboration of a multi-racial/ethnic team of researchers engaged in cross-disciplinary research. The information for this paper is based on the reflections of key members of the research team. The reflections show that having researchers with different epistemologies resulted in a culturally aware and sensitive study in which emic and etic research approaches were adopted. The inclusion of race-based epistemologies and close community ties were found to be particularly useful in building trust and getting the support of the two communities. However, these outcomes were only possible because research team members provided each other latitude for intellectual freedom and leadership.

KONSEP PENDIDIKAN KARAKTER PEREMPUAN MINANGKABAU SEBAGAI IDE PENCIPTAAN LUKISAN EKSPRESI SIMBOLIK

ABSTRACT This study focuses on the concept of ideal woman according to Minangkabau philosophy. The criteria of the ideal woman can be found in proverbs containing implicit meaning related to ethical value namely the view about woman’s ideal morality. That interpretation can be comprehended from its function and purpose as a concept of moral and character education for Minangkabau young generation.The study toward the character education of Minangkabau woman based on the interpretation of meaning from the concept of Minangkabau ideal woman became the basis of fine art creative idea resulting on the icon of personal expression. This artwork was materialized into the painting of symbolic expression/abstraction by borrowing the traditional idiom “Tangkuluak (Tekuluk),” a kind of Bundo Kanduang’s formal outfit in the form of headgear as the traditional symbol Minangkabau custom.The creation of this symbolic expression painting aims at the preservation effort of Minangkabau aesthetics through the materialization of paintings that takes the specific theme, Bundo Kanduang as the ideal woman of Minangkabau people.This study used qualitative method presented in the form of descriptive analysis. The techniques of data collection conducted were interview and observation that had emic characteristic performed in the Centre of Minangkabau Cultural Information (in Indonesia, it’s called as PDIKM) in Padangpanjang and Adityawarman Museum in Padang, West Sumatra. While etic research was conducted with qualitative method namely studying the theoretical claim and interpreting the meaning of proverbs about the nobility of Bundo Kanduang.

The Work of Black American Women Anthropologists in Jamaica

SINCE THE MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY, BY MY OWN informal counting, at least eleven African-American women anthropologists have carried out their doctoral research in Jamaica. Included on this list are Zora Neale Hurston, Katherine Dunham, Ida Tafari, Victoria Durant-Gonzalez, Faith Mitchell, Faye Harrison, Deborah A. Thomas, Gina Athene Ulysse, Bianca Williams, Lisa Anderson-Levy, as well as myself. What brings African-American women anthropologists to Jamaica?The reason for my focus on women anthropologists conducting research in has two parts. First, this is an aspect of my ongoing project, Face and Voice of Black Women Anthropologists'',1 an intellectual biography that historicises and focuses on theory building, recognition and respect or lack thereof garnered by the women who face barriers of racism and sexism in the academy and in the larger society of the United States; in that larger project I ask, what brings US black women to anthropology, this esoteric discipline, often demonised for its imperialist origins but the most scientific of the humanities and most humanistic of the social sciences? Second, included in the discussion of women anthropologists carrying out research in is the double-edged sword of public scrutiny, as they are gendered foreigners regardless of a shared phenotype. African-American anthropologist Brackette Williams reminds us that all my skinfolk ain't kinfolk as a way of expressing differences of class, nationality, gender, regardless of similar phenotype.2 What brings these researchers to a place such as Jamaica, I argue, is the development of an African diaspora knowledge and a mutual understanding of reciprocity, respect and responsibility that serves as a shared bridge across African diasporan cultures.Anthropological research utilises emic and etic methodologies. Conrad Kottak offers this definition of those processes and perspectives:The emic approach investigates how local people think. How they perceive and categorise the world, their rules for behaviour, what has meaning for them, and how they imagine and explain things . . . The etic scientist-oriented approach shifts the focus from local observations, categories, explanations, and interpretations to those of the anthropologist. The etic approach realises that members of a culture often are too involved in what they are doing to interpret their cultures impartially. When using the etic approach the ethnographer emphasises what he or she considers important.3According to African-American anthropologist Lee Baker, there is a history of where one carries out this emic and etic research, and the reasons for it are part of the lore, lure, controversies and benefits of anthropology.4A major rite of passage in the field of anthropology is to conduct fieldwork in a place not of your own location to assure impartiality, fresh eyes from an emic or etic perspective. For African-Americans there is an additional political position that underscores this intellectual challenge. First, there is the action of heeding Marcus Garvey's words of'Africa here and abroad, meaning that wherever peoples of African descent are found there is Africa and an affinity in common oppression and history. Second, there is the issue of grappling with the never-ending misrepresentation of peoples of Africa and of the African diaspora by a variety of hegemonic forces. So do the people of the land of wood and water satisfy this academic ritual? What brings anthropologists to that location to pursue this essential element of their studies and career? Is it because of Jamaica's physical or demographic size? Is that preference accorded to by its dominance in the old British colonial order, or by family ties? Through reading of selected texts - ethnography, articles and reports written by the women being considered here - I try to answer the why Jamaica question, but more importantly, in doing so I ask: what kind of research did they do; how did they manage daily living; what did they learn? …

Leadership effectiveness and motivation in Africa and the African Diaspora (LEAD): An introduction

AbstractThe LEAD research project was developed in order to broaden management research in areas such as Africa. This special issue brings together the early findings of the research team. The present article reviews the literature and discusses the importance of understanding organizational leadership and motivation in under researched areas of the world. We explain the use of both emic (Delphi Technique and focus groups) and etic (large scale survey) research and describe the LEAD project and methodology in detail. Here we advocate the use of emic and etic research, and also consider the practical realities of using such approaches. Copyright © 2014 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A Distinction between Emic Research and Etic Research

"A Distinction between Emic Research and Etic Research." Gifted and Talented International, 27(1), pp. 71–72

Capturing institutional home country conditions for exporting SMEs

In line with recent developments in institutional theory that indicate institutional settings can explain cross-national differences, this article proposes a measure of the institutional country profile relevant to exporting small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Combined emic and etic research approaches suggest a scale, derived through in-depth interviews with French and Romanian managers in SMEs and tested with 107 French export managers. The scale is psychometrically sound and supports a three-dimensional country institutional profile of exporting SMEs that comprises regulative, cognitive, and normative dimensions. The institutional profile of a country can complement, if not substitute for, culture as an explanation of export behavior. Furthermore, the proposed instrument can help researchers and managers diagnose countries' exporting strengths and weaknesses, according to their institutional conditions.

Taiwan Chinese managers' personality: is Confucian influence on the wane?

This paper conjectures that Chinese managers' personality in the Taiwan context, as shaped by Chinese tradition, has been moderated in response to their career experience. The paper begins with an introduction to Chinese culture and its impact on values and personality. It then goes on to argue that if the cultural context can nurture personality, we should therefore expect that as the context changes, personality can be moderated via economic reforms as in the case of Taiwan. It is reasonable to assume that among the Taiwanese, the occupational grouping that has most actively felt the impact of these reforms is managers who have been at the forefront of making them happen. We are not aware of any studies focusing on Taiwanese managers which attempt to assess how far their personality is still shaped by Confucian values which have strongly influenced Chinese traditions, and how far it has experienced changes that have come about through modernization and economic reform. We have addressed this research gap using the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI), an indigenous Chinese personality instrument developed by Cheung et al. (1996) with the support of an interview programme and a biographical data sheet to flesh out details related to the subjects' lives and experience. The findings suggest that the traditional Chinese personality with its grounding in Confucianism has been gradually eroding but that some elements of it are still strongly in evidence. The contribution of this study lies in illustrating how personality may be undergoing convergence through modernization. It also signals that cultural boundaries with reference to emic and etic research may also be converging. To the extent that this is so, future studies on culture and business management in China may need to reappraise their understanding of the nature of Chinese culture, values and personality, and how they have responded to business forces in a globalized world.

“To thine own self(ves) be true”: Reflexive insights for etic self theory from consumers’ emic constructions of the self

The self and related multiple self constructs while widely applied in many guises in consumption‐focused research may be surprisingly underdetermined or misconstrued. What has been missing in particular is a critical perspective assessing an emic view of consumers’ personal theories and narratives of the self. A study using written protocols was conducted to investigate these consumer perspectives and a hermeneutic thematic analysis was developed. Varying accounts of the self in terms of its definition, multiplicity, and related dialectical and reflexive consumption processes were found, suggesting that prior etic self theories ignored many nuances of consumers’ constructions of the self. Building on these accounts, an enhanced theoretical framework of the self emerges involving multiple personal constructions of the self, the reflexivity of the narrative of the self (theory of the self as a construct) with the narrative of oneself (identity construction) and a critical perspective on the discourses of self reflexively involving etic–researcher and emic–consumer cultures.

Marriages between Asian, American, and Dutch Corporations: A Matter of Cultural Fit?

In this paper two studies about the impact of cultural differences on corporate marriages are discussed. Very often it is hypothesized that culture has a large impact on joint ventures and mergers, however, few studies come up with empirical evidence. To explore such culture's consequences two studies were conducted, where different research approaches were used. In the first study into Japanese and American joint ventures in Indonesia, an etic research approach was chosen. Leadership styles and stress were examined in particular, as effects of differences in national cultures. On most of the concepts we measured, Japanese managers seem to fit better in an Indonesian context than American managers do. In the second study into Japanese-Dutch and American-Dutch mergers, an emic research approach is used. Two American-Dutch mergers and one Japanese-Dutch merger are currently the subject of research. The focus of the second study is on the acculturation process of the two merging entities. Based on the preliminary results and an extensive literature review, it is concluded that Japanese-Dutch companies are more difficult to combine than American-Dutch companies, although culture clashes also occur in American-Dutch combinations.

Issues and New Directions in Global Consumer Psychology

Although there is growing interest in cultural differences in consumer behavior, focused and systematic consumer research on the topic is still in its infancy. The conceptual and methodological issues that are central to conducting cross‐cultural research, including selecting or blending emic and etic research approaches, achieving measurement equivalence, expanding the cultural constructs and geographical regions under investigation, and understanding mediating processes, are addressed. In the process, the progress that has been made in addressing these issues in consumer psychology is reviewed and a number of priorities for future research in this important domain are suggested.

Genetics of Childhood Disorders: III. Genetics and Intelligence

Gen etic research has mad e imp ortant discoveries about intelligence during the past few decades. To outline some of these find ings, I won't spend space on the measurement of intelligen ce except to say that what I mean by intelligence is general cognitive ability defined as g. All reliable and valid tests of cognitive ability intercorrelare at a modest level-g is what they have in common . g is often assessed as a total score across diverse cognitive tests as in intelligence (IQ) tests, although it is more accurately indexed by an unrotated prin cipal component that best reflects what is in common amo ng the tests. Nearly all genetic dat a have been obtained using measures develop ed from th is psychometri c perspective, primarily IQ tests. One new direction for genetic research on intelligence is to investigate other measures such as information-pro cessing and more direc t measures of brain function such as evoked potentials, positron em ission tomograph ic scans, and functional magnet ic resonance imaging and to explain how these measures relate to g. g clearly run s in fam ilies. The correl at ions for first-degree relatives living together average 0.43 for more than 8,0 00 parent-offspring pairs and 0.47 for more than 25,000 pairs of siblings. However, g might run in fam ilies fo r reason s of nu rture or of nature. In studies involving more th an 10,000 pairs of twins, the average g correlations are 0.8 5 for identical twin s and 0.60 for same-sex fraternal twins. These twin dat a suggest a genetic effect size (heritability) that explains about half of the tot al variance in g scores. Adoption stu dies also yield est imates of substantial her itability. For example, identical twins reared apart are almost as similar for g as identical twins reared together. Ado ption stud ies of other first-degree relatives also ind icate substant ial her itab ilit y, as illustra ted below by recent results from the