Emic and Etic Perspectives of the Holiday
Question :
Create a 1-to-3-page, double-spaced paper describing emic and etic perspectives of the holiday of Halloween in the United States.
The headings must be centered on the line and formatted in bold and in title case. Include at least the following headings: Emic Perspectives of Halloween, Etic Perspectives of Halloween, and Conclusion.
Answer :
Introduction
This paper has been developed to analyze two different perspectives such as the perspective of Emic as well as Etic on culture. The purpose of the paper is to critically analyze the Emic perspective of Halloween and the Etic perspective of Halloween. It is possible to have two different perspectives on a culture of own or someone else. As an insider, an individual may have a specific perspective towards his or her own culture while as an outsider he or she may have a different perspective on the same culture. Thus, it is important to analyze how an individual looks at culture as an insider and outsider.
Emic Perspective of Halloween
Emic perspectives refer to descriptions of behaviors and beliefs in terms that are
meaningful to people who belong to a specific culture, e.g., how people perceive and categorize their culture and experiences, why people believe they do what they do, how they imagine and explain things (Brown et al., 2018). Halloween is one of the day holidays that is celebrated on October 31 each year. The people of America actively participate in the festival and celebrate it with full of joy as they become what they want to be. However, the emic perspective of Halloween is something different from the etic perspective of Halloween. Emic considers it as one of the weirdest cultural fests. Halloween is one of the festivals that is highly celebrated each year. On this day, people set themselves free and they are able to be what they actually want to be such as a politician, a clown, or Kylie Jenner (Gaber, 2017). Almost every culture throughout the world has a day in a year on which people celebrate as well as pray for their loved ones who have passed away. The most amazing part of this festival is that anyone of any age group can engage in the festival in their own way and enjoy the festival to the fullest. Children on this day are allowed to go trick or treat and ask their neighbors for candy. On the other hand, teenagers are allowed to go to parties dressed in different costumes (they wear different types of costumes to celebrate the festival) and set themselves free for the night. Adults also hang out in their homes or somewhere outside their homes and wait for trick or treaters without forgetting the apple cider.
All cultures throughout the world have different ways in order to deal with different aspects of existence such as death. But the Americans do not think Halloween as a spiritual celebration. But the emic perspective of Halloween considers it as a spiritual celebration. The celebration of Halloween is highly filled with consumerism that is one of the saddest parts of the festival (Knabb & Wang, 2019). But it is also important to consider that consumerism is another aspect of American society. Halloween is simply tangled with cultural celebration.
Etic Perspectives of Halloween
Etic perspectives refer to explanations for behavior made by an outside observer in ways that are meaningful to the observer (Brown et al., 2018). It is also important to look at the etic perspective of Halloween in order to analyze how Americans think of it and celebrate it. It is a day to live as what an individual wants to be in his or her real life. This is a day on which people enjoy to the fullest. It is a spooky celebration that is filled with trick or treating, costumes, as well as pumpkin carving. On this day, every individual prepares for the final day of the month and everything becomes pumpkin flavored such as muffins, pies, coffee, etc. October is the most exciting month in the year for those who are highly festive as well as for those who are not festive. Every individual celebrates it with full of joy.
As it has been discussed that on this day, people live in the way they actually want to live their lives, thus, this is a very important day for those people who want to live at least one day in their lives as they want to live. However, some people do not celebrate it in America because they believe that it is associated with satanism or paganism (Mostowlansky & Rota, 2016). People also find religious context in this festival as its origin is as a Christian holiday. Thus, people of other religion generally avoid to celebrate it.
It is very tough to find differences in perspective of etic or emic considering Halloween festival because the insider, as well as outsider, sees the festival from the same angle apart from those who find a religious angle in this festival. Those who do not celebrate Halloween have an alternative festival called a harvest festival. Apart from this, the autumn celebration is also there that is highly celebrated by people.
Conclusion
There are different perspectives of people on Halloween but it is very tough to distinguish from the perspective of an insider to an outsider who wants to celebrate Halloween. Both insider and outsider see it as a way of living life as an individual wants to live in actual. But for those who have a religious angle Halloween is different.
References
Brown, N., de González, L. T., McIlwraith, T. F., & American Anthropological Association. (2018). Perspectives: An Open Invitation to Cultural Anthropology.
Gaber, J. (2017). Seeing the community’s perspective through multiple emic and etic vistas. Health promotion international, 32(6), 1025-1033.
Knabb, J. J., & Wang, K. T. (2019). The Communion With God Scale: Shifting from an etic to emic perspective to assess fellowshipping with the Triune God. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality.
Mostowlansky, T., & Rota, A. (2016). A Matter of Perspective?: Disentangling the Emic–Etic Debate in the Scientific Study of Religion\s. Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 28(4-5), 317-336.
