Single or married? Positioning the anthropologist in tourism research

Abstract

In this paper I reflect upon the difference „stages‟, appellations, and roles I went through during my fieldwork in Botiza, a village situated in the North-western part of Romania. The village has developed a form of locally managed rural tourism since 1994. My fieldwork coincided with a period of transformation, in which there were very few tourists and local tourism politics were hardly developed, through a period of exponential growth in tourism demand between 1995 and 2001. Both the populace and the administration have had to review local social dynamics, in order to organise the village and deal with the increasing tourism demand.I was particularly interested in tourist-local interaction. I observed that whilst the impact of change is present in politics and in practises of tourism, it is not recognized in the narratives. Having lived for a long time with a family in Botiza that hosts tourists, I observed the everyday practices of the hosts and, at a certain times, I, the ethnographer, played a part in the context I was observing. Far from home and alone I entered local houses and met people, being named each time „the guest‟, „the sister‟, „the friend‟, „the teacher‟, „the tourist‟, „the stranger‟, „the easy girl‟. The very first question I was always asked was “Married or not?” The extent to which I was rejected or accepted according to the context or/and the information brought me inside my research and formed part of my fieldwork experience.