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.
