Woman, Non-Native, Other

Abstract

This article addresses my fieldwork experiences as a Korean-American woman in Sri Lanka. In particular, it highlights the challenges I encountered around my identity, ranging from almost universal initial disbelief of my being “American” to questioning why I was studying in Sri Lanka and not South Korea. I go on to discuss how these challenges illustrate the persistence of the native/insider and non-native/outsider binary, and how, through this binary, the default racial category of the anthropologist still remains unnuanced and white.