E-mail: sarahtaylor44@gmail.com

Website: www.sarahruthtaylor.com

Education:

BA Anthropology and Latin american Studies: California State University, Chico (2005)
MA Applied Anthropology: California State University, Long Beach (2008)
Ph.D. Anthropology: University at Albany, SUNY (expected 2013)

Current research:

Overall, my research examines the interactions between a community-based tourism development initiative and existing social structures in a village in Yucatan, Mexico. Specifically, it is an attempt to answer the following three questions:

1. How do households balance economic strategies that prioritize tourism with traditional economic strategies for land use?
   
2. What is the relationship between household decision making processes and kin group membership?
   
3. Given questions 1 and 2, how do these social and economic processes influence interactions with non-local social actors (voluntourists, NGO staff, etc...)?

Yucatán, Maya ethnography, tourism, theoretical frameworks for economic development, agrarian reform and socioeconomic adaptation, political ecology and land use, ethnographic film, applied anthropology, community-based development strategies, and participatory research design.