Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons^™

Hide And Seek: How And Why Peace Corps Panama Volunteers Conceal And Reveal Parts Of Their Social Identities And Perceived Impacts On Their Cultural Integration, Sara Sweeney

Capstone Collection

Hide and Seekexplores Peace Corps’ role in Panama and details the unique opportunities that Peace Corps Volunteers have to integrate and experience remote communities of the Indigenous tribe known as the Ngäbe Bugle. The main research question of this paper is derived from the challenges that Volunteers in Panama commonly face upon arriving to their communities and presenting themselves to their community members. I will discuss how Volunteers process the cultural differences they experience in their communities, how they respond to them, and whether they choose to conceal or reveal parts of their social identities to their community members. …