When doing research, one can take an emic (insider's) perspective or an etic (outsider's) perspective, or move between both, I guess.
But there is more to these concepts.
emic
ˈiːmɪk/
adjective
ANTHROPOLOGY
adjective: emic
- studying or describing a particular language or culture in terms of its internal elements and their functioning rather than in terms of any existing external scheme."accurate ethnographic description from an internal or emic perspective, from the native point of view"
This definition implies that to have an emic understanding of a language or a culture we must be a speaker of the language or a member of the culture or spend enough time in contact with it to understand the speakers' or members' perspective.
I wonder what applies in multilingual and multicultural contexts, where languages and cultures are mixed and our belonging may become partial, problematic.