The Formation Mode And Role Influence Of Female Tourism Elites In The Western Ethnic Communities

In the ethnic regions of western China,the local government and rural communities had viewed tourism development as the important approach of economic development and social transformation.The locals involved in the tourism reception with great enthusiasm,and displayed their own abilities.Then some of them got the success beyond other locals,and has become the new elites which were called tourism elites.This meant that the social structure of ethnic tourism community has changed by the tourism development.It is worth concerning that tourism elites also sprung up from local women who were the main participants of community tourism.These women elites had seized the opportunity,and became the key participants of community tourism.And this situation reflected the positive interaction between community tourism and local women development.However,local women had always been placed in a passive position in the past researches of tourism development and women in destinations.While the current paper highlighted the activeness of women who were considered as independent individuals,and estimated the formation pattern of women elites within tourism and their influence on the outside world from a perspective of active participation.Through analyzing the involving and formation process of women elites within tourism,this article aimed to provide effective reference for improving the involvement level of community,explore a new idea for communities to fostering local elites,and discuss the functions of women elites in the stabilization of social structure,and promote the sustainable development and the better governance of community.This study tried to bulid the theoretical analysis framework of women elites within tourism,and explored the effective approaches of women development and the governance in ethnic tourism communities.Meanwile,this research has expanded the research perspectives of the socio-cultural impact of tourism,and enriched the empirical study.Depending on the resources superiority,individual become the elites in certain social environments,and then has impact on the outside world based on their specific roles.The outside also influences on the elites at the same time.Therefore,the formation of elites,their roles and roles' impacts are the results of interaction between elite selves and the external groups.This research focused on three questions:"how do these ethnic women become elite in the community?","what roles do these women elites play in the community?","whether and how their elite identity had got the external recognition?".Firstly,through integrating the formation factors,types and formation process of different types of women elites,this study tried to analyze the formation pattern of women elites within tourism.Secondly,this paper also estimated the impact of women elites on the communities by researching on their roles.Lastly,researching about the external recognition could verify the women elites' identity,and estimated their effect and the ability of influence.The specific contents are shown below,in the chapter 1 to 3,the author introducted the research context,stated the objective and significance and literature reviews of this paper,and described the research design in detail.The chapter 4 discussed the formation factors and its special features,and the formation pattern was the core question of the chapter 5 which integrating the formation factors,types and formation process of different types of women elites.The Chapter 6 focused on the roles women elites playing in the communities,and the main content of the chapter 7 was whether and how their elite identity had got the external recognition.The research conclusions,practical enlightenment,innovation and reflection were the main content of the chapter 8.Based on the studies of the rural elites in sociology and the women development in tourism research field,this paper defined the notion of women elites within tourism,and estimated the dynamic formation process of women elites within tourism in ethnic communities with the methods of fieldwork,ground theory,content analysis and conceptual model.Primary material was the main resource of this paper which came from the on-site survey.Sampling followed the logic of theoretical saturation of ground theory,and the material collection occurred at the same time with the analysis.The main conclusions of this research are as follows:(1)The formation of women elites within tourism not only relied on the factors of traditional rural elites and tourism elites,but also was influenced by the ethnic culture,the gender identity and division of household labor.It meant that community tourism,individual abilities and resource,ethnic culture,gender identity and the division shaped the women elites' formation together.(2)Women elites within tourism can be divided into four types:economic elites,"feminine" ethnic cultural elites,governing elites and the communities'symbols elites.Furthermore,they had broken the community men-dominated elites,and became elites in several public spheres.However,women elites within tourism were usually non-system elites,and they could not control political power.(3)There were two stages of the formation pattern of women elites within tourism,which included the success of tourism involvement and accumulating personal influence,and there was an interactive relationship between the two stages.Different formatting factors worked in different stages.(4)The women elites within tourism played the positive,negative and idiosyncratic female roles.The impacts of their roles mainly concentrated on the community tourism,the protection and inheritance of ethnic "female" art,the employment and caregiving of women and vulnerable individuals.(5)What really matters to the external recognition of women elites within tourism were their contribution and influence.Whereas traditional gender roles still deeply influenced peoples' expectation and evaluation to the identity of women elites within tourism.The innovations of this study including:(1)This paper put forward the theoretical analysis framework of women elites within tourism which including formation factors,pattern,types,roles and their external recognition,and expanded the research of community tourism and women development.(2)From a feminist perspective,we found that women' gender identity and traits had special impacts on the formation process of women elites,and their roles in communities and the external recognition of them.And these findings could help us to understand the gender difference of social stratification under the context of tourism development.(3)The current research integrated the formation factors,types and formation process of different types of women elites to uncovered their formation pattern,and revealed the time and stages characteristic of it.This enriched the studies on the formation of community elites.There still was room for improvement,especially optimizing the interviewees sampling and the sample structure.And the authors had reflected on it.Meanwhile,it was the long-term follow-up study on women elites within tourism and the comparison between women and men that the author suggested researchers to concentrate in the future.