Doctoral Dissertation Research: Tourism Development and Single Mother Families in Huatulco, Oaxaca, Mexico

研究生研究员Dawn Pankonien在Micaela di Leonardo博士的指导下，将调查新旅游目的地单身母亲家庭数量增加的原因和后果。由于旅游业对自然资源和人力资源提出了独特的要求，现在以旅游目的地为特征的城市使经济扩张理论复杂化。Pankonien将在墨西哥的华图尔科进行实地研究。华图尔科代表了如今在全球南方推广的建设速度越来越快、但不太成功的旅游城镇。该研究旨在了解单亲母亲家庭形成与旅游业发展之间的统计和经验证据。旅游业的发展改变了社会和经济结构，同时也重新配置了当地的意义系统和意义传播的话语。因此，Pankonien将收集妇女在机会、互动和获取资源方面的变化，以及她们如何看待游客和旅游业，他人如何看待她们，以及华图尔科居民如何理解当代亲属关系和家庭关系的数据。她将采用一系列定性和定量的研究方法，包括调查、参与式观察和半结构化访谈。该研究将为全球化在地方层面的社会和经济后果的社会科学理论做出贡献。这项研究还将支持社会科学家的教育。

Graduate student researcher, Dawn Pankonien, supervised by Dr. Micaela di Leonardo, will investigate the causes and ramifications of the increase in the numbers of single mother families in newer tourist destinations. Cities now characterized as tourist destinations complicate theories of economic expansion because of the unique demands that tourism places on natural and human resources. Pankonien will conduct her field research in Huatulco, Mexico. Huatulco represents the ever more rapidly constructed and less successful tourist towns being promoted across the global South today. The research is designed to understand statistical and empirical evidence linking single mother family formation to tourism development.Tourism development alters social and economic structures at the same time that it reconfigures local systems of meaning and the discourses through which meaning is communicated. Therefore, Pankonien will gather data on both changes in women's opportunities, interactions, and access to resources, and on how they percieve tourists and the tourist industry, how they are perceived by others, and how Huatulco residents understand contemporary kinship and family relations. She will employ a range of qualitative and quantiatative research methods including surveys, participant observation, and semi-structured interviews. The research will contribute to social science theory about the local level social as well as economic consequences of globalization. The research also will support the education of a social scientist.