Posted by Yvonne on March 29, 2005 at 09:17:38
In Reply to: Quoting from Geert Hofstede? posted by Question on March 29, 2005 at 06:45:40:
'Question' do you teach? You should do if you don't, as you not only appear to have patience, but you unpack and explain and do this very well! I have read this thread with interest and appreciation.
There is also the emic and etic approach to studying 'the other'.
Monika, within cross-cultural psychiatry and medical anthropology, for example, a distinction has been made between the Emic and Etic frameworks for social analysis. These constructs distinguish analysis frameworks that are rooted in the culture of the group under study, incorporating the ‘insiders’ perspective [Emic] from those based on professional ideologies immovably established within the outsider’s perspective [Etic] (Headland et al 1990). Thus, a study of local concepts is rooted in the meanings attributed to these actions by the actors. However, an epidemiological study employing concepts rooted in the culture of the researcher is more ethnocentric and has less meaning for those whom the research studies. It seems that this may also be what is happening here - your questions are painfully obvious when YOU think about them. But what the responders here are saying reflects for example directions given by a gaelic speaker:- I wouldn't start from over here if I was you.....
This doesn't make either you or your participants right/wrong, but maybe means that you are going to have to think deeper and longer than perhaps the level that you are studying at would necessarily require you to do to complete your study successfully.
You may really have to think about how meaning derived from another culture; The Family, which although it looks like an off shoot of a fairly standard western culture, has many of the defining features of a seperate culture in its own right.
If you want to understand some of the reasons you are having trouble with 'language' read Robert Jay Lifton's Thought Reform and the psychology of Totalism. His work on 'loading the language' should help.
I wish you well in your studies and hope you can take the advice given to you in the spirit it is intended.