A Matter of Perspective?

This article introduces the emic-etic debate in the scientific study of religion\s and provides a frame for the special issue's six articles on the topic. Departing from the broader debate's early history in the 1960s, this article contextualizes the emic-etic debate and locates its point of entry into the scientific study of religion\s in the 1980s. This article argues that in the course of the debate the insider-outsider and emic-etic complexes have become entangled. In order to facilitate an understanding of the debate, this article maintains that the emic-etic debate in the scientific study of religion\s touches upon three central dimensions (existential-political, methodological, and epistemological). In order to move toward a clearer methodological and epistemological framework, this article furthermore proposes an iterative model that locates insider-outsider at the level of observers and emic-etic at the level of categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]