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亲母亲家庭数量增加的原因和后果。由于旅游业对自然和人力资源的独特需求，如今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Huatulco进行她的实地研究。华图尔科代表着今天在全球南方推广的建设速度更快、但不太成功的旅游城镇。这项研究旨在理解将单亲母亲家庭的形成与旅游业发展联系起来的统计和经验证据。旅游业发展在改变社会和经济结构的同时，它重新配置了当地的意义系统和传达意义的话语。因此，Pankonien将收集关于女性机会、互动和获取资源的变化的数据，以及她们如何吸引游客和旅游业，她们如何被他人感知，以及Huatulco居民如何理解当代亲属和家庭关系的数据。她将采用一系列定性和定量的研究方法，包括调查、参与者观察和半结构化访谈。这项研究将有助于关于全球化的地方一级社会和经济后果的社会科学理论。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.