Open AccessWoman, Non-Native, Other
Author(s) -
Vivian W. Choi
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
commoning ethnography
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2537-9879
DOI - 10.26686/ce.v3i1.6652
Subject(s) - insider , sri lanka , native american , identity (music) , gender studies , white (mutation) , ethnology , sociology , genealogy , history , political science , south asia , aesthetics , art , law , biochemistry , chemistry , gene
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.