Native-speakerism is a pervasive ideology within ELT, characterized by the belief that ‘native-speaker’ teachers represent a ‘Western culture’ from which spring the ideals both of the English language and of English language teaching methodology (Holliday 2005). Use of the concept follows a now established concern about political inequalities within ELT (for example, Canagarajah 1999, Kubota 2001, Pennycook 1994). However, other attempts to capture this inequality, for example ‘Centre’ vs. ‘Periphery’ (Phillipson 1992) and ‘BANA’ vs. ‘TESEP’ (Holliday 1994), have suffered from binary regional or cultural overgeneralization. Native-speakerism is seen instead as a divisive force which originates within particular educational cultures within the English-speaking West. While the adoption of and resistance to the ideology take place to a greater or lesser degree throughout the ELT world, the ‘native speaker’ ideal plays a widespread and complex iconic role outside as well as inside the English-speaking West.