The Etic and Emic volunteer

This past Saturday, I helped out at the CAPC Conference – an annual conference for parents about health and wellbeing, which was hosted at Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House (FHNH) this year.  As part of my placement, I created two displays: one about healthy breakfast and reading nutrition labels, and the other about farmers’ markets in Vancouver.  During a portion of the conference, parents would visit different displays and talk to volunteers such as myself about the topics our displays covered.

One of my displays for the CAPC Conference

In Chapter 4 of my Fieldworking textbook, the authors discuss the different perspectives a fieldworker my hold: as an insider or an outsider (referred to as the emic and etic perspectives, respectively).  When I arrived at FHNH, I was experiencing the environment with an etic perspective:  I was following directives about where to move different objects to prepare for the conference, and about who to process registration.  Without the directives, I would have had no idea what to do.  When parents visited the displays, I initially felt like an outsider, speaking to them as an objective, detached person with a scripted idea of what to say about breakfast, nutrition, and farmers’ markets.

As the day went on, and I started to recognize similar themes in parents’ questions and comments (for example “is ____ safe to feed my child?” or “I prefer to serve my child ____ because it is healthier”), I started to experience the conference from a more emic perspective.  As parents visited my displays, I felt more comfortable about and aware of the types of concerns that they had, which I think enabled me to be a more effective volunteer.

For example, at my display, I had samples of healthy, dry cereal that could be served to children for breakfast.  Many of the parents commented about how they liked the taste and thought it was appropriate to serve to their children, but those with younger children often expressed concern about the cereal being too crunchy and hard to eat. I don’t have children and spend very little time around them, so these comments were really useful in giving me an insider’s perspective about nutrition.

This experience helped inform my final research project which on the topic of breakfast.  What I have been learning from most parents is that the biggest influence over what will be eaten for breakfast is efficiency. In addition to cooking, [arents with young children also have to do things like dress their children, pack their children’s bags, make their lunches, drive them to school or wait with them for the school bus.

By contrast, when I get up in the morning to go to school, I just need to get dressed, have breakfast, and then run out the door!  If I sleep in and don’t have time for breakfast, I can still always grab an overpriced muffin at UBC on my way to class.

After helping out at the CAPC Conference this weekend, I better appreciate the hard work that goes into parenting, and I hope my contributions were helpful to those who attended!

References: FieldWorking: Reading and Writing Research, by Bonnie Stone Sunstein and Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater (2007)