ABSTRACT

The emic approach is relativist, aligns with social constructionism and represents the view that culture is unique to a group and qualitative in nature so different groups cannot and should not be compared. It values the way groups speak about and make sense of themselves (and thus autonomy and selfdetermination), and thus belies that all groups are equal. It avoids using characteristics of one group to make sense of another group and false judgements that a group is ‘lacking’ on something that may not even be relevant to them.