Introduction
Studying human culture grant us an opportunity to look at other people’s ways of living from a distinct and up-close perspective and understand their culture from their point of view. Sometimes it becomes challenging to look at other people’s culture without being biased. Due to these challenges, anthropologists have developed different approaches to help understand the culture including etic or outsider’s perspective, and emic or insider’s perspective. Evaluating cultures using these perspectives ensure the researchers are not biased where they are evaluating other people’s culture, and also when looking at their own culture. An etic perspective entails viewing a culture from outsider’s perspective or from an eye of someone who is not part of the culture, while emic culture entails observing a given culture from within the culture itself.
Therefore, in this paper, I will use the outsiders or etic perspective to examine an aspect of my own culture which is African American culture, and insider’s perspective or emic perspective to evaluate aspects of the Asian culture, hence offering understanding and an explanation of their behaviors and practices and their cultural system in general. The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate that although the African American and Asia cultures are different in terms of time and some components , they also have some similar elements. Before the evaluation, it may seem that the two cultures do not have anything in common, but through this paper, I will be able to demonstrate some of their shared practices and behaviors. For the analysis, cultural realism will be used as the methodological tool because of its effectiveness in demonstrating customs and cultural elements of different cultures. I will be examining how insiders look at the Asian culture of relationships and polygamy marriages and evaluate the African American culture of marriages and courtship in an etic point of view.
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Etic (Outsider’s) Perspective
In today’s world, cultures play an important role in shaping the world and its people. According to Crapo (2013), viewing your own culture as superior to other people’s culture is known as Ethnocentrism. Therefore, it is important to view people’s culture using cultural relativism which entails viewing other people culture from a perspective of a person who is practicing the culture which is on your own. Using the article by Miner (1956), I will describe the aspect of marriage and courtship in the African American culture. When I decided to write about my culture from this point of view, I had to let go what I know about the element of marriage and courtship in my culture and the experiences and opinions about the elements which circulate in the culture from one generation to another. As an outsider, looking at the African American culture can be viewed as a foreign concept which is difficult to understand. In his article Body Ritual among the Nacirema , Miner (1956) has offered an etic perspective about the American culture believed to have contributed significantly to the establishment of my culture. When reading t his article, it is not easy to understand whom he is talking about or the culture he is trying to demonstrate.
Marriage and courtship is an essential element of African American culture. Dating rituals may vary from one group to another, but the primary role of this ritual is to get married. Traditionally, it was the man’s responsibility to approach a woman and ask her for a date which will be a sign of trying to settle with her and start a family (Herskovits, 1972). This makes the African American culture different from other cultures because parents are not the one who picks the partners who will marry their children. The culture has been advancing from year to year with a huge number of African American youths increasingly settling away from their parents and family hence they have an opportunity to decide who will marry them or whom they will marry without asking the parents and family opinions.
Marriage is an essential step in every African American family. This occurs where parents and the society expect an adult to have a spouse and have children. For decades, it has remained to be an important element of display how responsible an individual is. However, in the last few decades, African American culture has experienced major changes where people are courting and marrying people from outside their culture. For example, when I was 22 years old, I met a man of Chinese/Hawaiian origin who was living in the United States. Few years into the courtship I conceived a boy child and years later, the marriage did not work hence I was forced to divorce him. The issue of divorce was received differently in both the African American and the Asian culture where my husband family accepted our decision and promised to support my child and me regardless of what has happened in the marriage. On the other hand, on trying to explain to my family which is strongly established in the African American culture of marriage and courtship, they did not accept my decision, and they tried to convince me to give the marriage a try. My family not supporting me when I needed them most as my husband received support from his family making it easy for him to get over the breakup bothered so much. However, I later came to learn that in the African American culture, parents work towards ensuring their children’s marriages is a success, and failing in marriage is viewed as an embarrassment to the family. African American culture value marriages more than any other aspect of the society because of the value of children and family.
When the slavery was being practiced in America, it was normal for families to be separated. However, regardless of the distance, the African American families were from each other, they managed to maintain their family bond. During slavery, the African American men, and women who managed to free by escaping, being hired out or those who were emancipated worked hard and long to buy out or help members of their family gain their freedom (Crapo, 2013). For those who could not reach their families, they managed to form blood kin who included play relations, play cousins and aunts and others (Herskovits, 1972) . This culture has remained in the African America societies. Therefore, whenever a woman or a man decide to form a family, the culture expect the choice to be from one of their own, and when you fail to observe this custom, the family members tend to care less in case of events of divorce as it happened in my case. The culture has seen the largest percentage of African American men and women marry and court people from their own culture, and this is viewed as a way of keeping the culture strong and pure regardless of the adverse effect it has on marriages where couples prefer to suffer from a spouse from his own culture provided they are approved by the family. This is different from other cultures where they can marry and get married, divorce or stay together without their culture impacting their decision in marriages and courtship.
Emic (Insider’s) Perspective
Asian culture has major similarities and differences when compared with the African American culture. For the few years I lived with my ex-husband, I managed to understand different elements of culture which are similar to mine, but there were few components differing. When am looking at the Asian culture from the insider perspective or emic perspective, I will be trying to understand the elements of relationship and polygamy marriages which are highly built in the cultures family values (Herskovits, 1972). Asian culture is among the first to recognize and accept the issue of divorce, where it offers three traditional ways of undertaking this process, which is different from the African American culture. However, both culture agrees both parties make the decision of ending the marriage together although the reasons and in the Asian culture, there are minor complains which may be made by the husband resulting in divorce.
After giving birth to my son with my ex-husband, every member of his family appreciated his decision to get married and start a family because the culture treats marriage as a bonding of families rather than individuals. This is because, the arrangements are common in the Asian culture and for a male, who manages to find a spouse without the help of family members or the community, it is an indication of heroic, and this encouraged my ex-husband family to support him. When we announced the termination of our marriage to my ex-husband family, they depicted major support for both of use without favoring either side. The Asian culture believes in marriage relationship therapies, and we were given different options to try and mend the marriage. My ex-husband family tried to talk us both to change the decision but the culture claim that marriages be dissolved whenever there are cases of personal incompatibilities between the parties. Therefore, they found it easy accepting the decision to dissolve the relationship because of the clear guidelines established by the culture to help in the process.
Asian culture has enormous customs and practices when it comes to marriage relationships and polygamy marriages. When reviewing the elements of marriage relationships and polygamy marriages in the Asian culture in insider perspective, I will be trying to describe how their customs and beliefs strengthen married couples and help the continuity of the marriage values in the society. The Asian culture especially Chinese communities believe in relationships before marriage. Once the relationship between the two partners has been established, the culture believes in knowing family members of the couple, which may take even a year. However, due to increasing modernization in Asia, few couples are completing the whole process of relationship between the two partners. When in a relationship which is expected to develop into marriage, couples are expected to remain faithful to each other. Although there are societies in Asian such as Japanese, who do not allow the unmarried partners to spend time together, urbanization is changing such customs (Herskovits, 1972). However, whenever a couple gets a child before the wedding, they are allowed to stay together, but there are few customs that they will need to observe. On the other hand, the element of polygamy marriage is not a common activity in the Asian culture, although it was common decades ago especially in Thailand. Due to strict rules guiding men to abstain from polygamy marriages, a number of men especially in China prefer to divorce their wives for example if they cannot bear a son, so that they can marry a new wife who is able to give birth to a child. The culture increased the cases of divorce and single motherhood in Asia in the last few decades, especially in the urban areas.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is clear that anthropology grants us fundamental elements to assist us in battling ethnocentrism. Understanding other peoples, culture is essential in grasping the reasons behind some of their actions and behaviors. When evaluating the African American in etic perspective, it helps us understand how other peoples understand and perceive us, where normal behaviors in African American culture may seem strange in other cultures. For example, evaluating marriage and courtship in the African American culture help us understand some of the decisions made by the members of this society when dealing with issues of culture and same when considering the issues of relationships and polygamy marriages in the Asian culture.
References
Crapo, R. H. (2013). Cultural anthropology [Electronic version]. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/
Herskovits, M. J., & Herskovits, F. (1972). Cultural Relativism : Perspectives in cultural pluralism . New York.
Miner, H. (1956), Body Ritual among the Nacirema. American Anthropologist , 58: 503–507. doi:10.1525/aa.1956.58.3.02a00080
