Textual Analysis Of The Filipino Cultural Outsiders

Strictly following Dr Enriquez’s early stance, only Filipinos (by citizenship and upbringing) are necessarily culture-bearers, thus the only ones permitted to study Filipino psychology. That is, the Filipino culture-bearer is well-immersed in the mores and trappings of the people, possessing great expertise and sophistication with respect to the culture’s complex history, social structures, practices, beliefs, and manifestations. In essence, anyone who is not a Filipino—foreign researchers, regardless of their level of understanding of the culture—is immediately excluded from this circle of who can study the Filipino as they cannot be assured to give it justice and accurate representation.

It can be understood where Dr Enriquez is coming from

This follows from how Pe-Pua argues that even when conceptions or methodologies arise in the Philippines, they are not necessarily unique to our culture. As in the cross-indigenous approach, cultures develop their own indigenous concepts, bring to the international psychological community what they have found, try to cite similarities between the source cultures, then make use of what they find is

The exclusion of cultural outsiders can then be questioned on two fronts—of who is a Filipino (i.e., foreign nationals deeply immersed in the culture, versus the nominal Filipino citizen without cultural identification), and whether the outsider’s perspective is completely invalid. The latter debate is resolved in recognizing the complementary emic and etic approaches to doing research, of gaining insights respectively from the particular (i.e., the culture bearer) and the universal (i.e., the outsider). In this sense, while culture bearers can inform outsiders of the nuances of the local knowledge base and correct misinterpretations based on imposed perspectives, outsiders similarly attend to what is taken for granted and rediscovering the