User:Mcrussell11/sandbox

Fundación En Vía
Microfinance, Education, Responsible Tourism

I will be working with Fundación En Vía, a non-profit organization that is focused on female empowerment through education and micro-finance. The interest-free loans and education programs they provide are sustained through responsible tourism.

Teotilán del Valle, Santa María Guelacé, San Sebastián Abasolo, Santo Domingo Tomaltepec, & San Miguel del Valle[edit]
I will be working in the five villages in the Talcolula Valley that partner with En Vía and are located east of the City of Oaxaca. These villages are part of the Zapotec civilization. For my area think I would like to learn more about the history of the indigenous population and the significance of the Mitla and Yagul, prehistoric caves. It may also be useful to understand more about he economy in Oaxaca.


 * Yagul
 * Mitla
 * Zapotec
 * History of Oaxaca
 * Economy of Oaxaca

Sector: Responsible Tourism
I will be working with the coordinator and education team to provide basic business education to program participants. This will involve educating them on fundamental concepts regarding how to manage their loans, organize their business, set product prices, generate profits, and avoid losses. The interest free micro-finance loans are funded through responsible tourism. This may be another avenue to pursue.


 * Microfinance - I am not sure if I would like to engage on this page as it is a fairly controversial page
 * Responsible Tourism

Article Evaluations
Area: I have decided to evaluate the article for the Economy of Oaxaca. This article is very sparse and has a C rating. Furthermore it has not been updated since 2010. What is currently written on the article is well done, but I believe there is a lot more room to add important information regarding the role of cooperatives to combat neoliberalism in the area.

Sector: I have decided to work on the Sustainable Tourism page. I will be specifically working under the responsible tourism section under this page. There is a lack of citations in this section. I will also be discussing some of the controversies in the concept of sustainable tourism.

Evaluating Content

 * Area: this article was well written. Has great amounts of statistical information
 * Sector: This article has a significant amount of content. Still lacking critical citations and a well rounded approach to a complicated and intricate issue.

Evaluating Tone

 * Area: The tone of this article is pretty straight forward it does not seem to be conveying strong opinions.
 * Sector: This article is pretty technical and has fairly nuanced terms that could use clearer defining.

Evaluating Sources

 * Area: the sources look sound and diverse. Some of them are retrieved from state data bases and others appear to be from reliable sources. I do think that the sources could be more academic sources as there are only 18 sources on the entire page.
 * Sector: This page is lacking in inline citations and citations over all even through there are 50 for a topic that receives this much action there should be more and the strength of those sources could be improved.

Checking the Talk Page

 * Area: this article has not received a rating on the importance scale. It has on overall C-Class on the quality. I believe this is mostly due to the fact that it is not a fully developed page. There is not much action on the talk page.
 * Sector: There is a significant amount of controversy over the title of the page. I agree with one user that it should be titled Responsible Tourism rather than Sustainable since frankly there is nothing environmentally sustainable about tourism.

Area

 * The Sustainability of Urban Heritage Preservation article does not have a bit of an extended tie to the economy of Oaxaca but I think that it could be an interesting article to include in my research. It discusses the process and effects of modernity in the city. It analyzes the preservation of the city and the results and responses to the political and social events in 2006 that froze economic activity.
 * Howell, Jayne. "“The Dirt Came Up”: Domestic Service and Women’s Agency in Oaxaca City, Mexico." City & Society 29.3 (2017): 393-412. · This article outlines the prevalence and importance of domestic labor in Oaxaca. In the state of Oaxaca, over 60,000 women generate income through paid domestic labor. This state also includes the highest percentage of workers in the informal sector standing at 80 percent. This article successfully shows the effects of extreme wealth inequality and its effect on female participation in the economy.
 * Cohen, Jeffery H., et al. "Gender, Work, and Opportunity in Oaxaca: Some Thoughts on the Importance of Women in the Economic Life of the Rual Village." Economic Development, Integration, and Morality in Asia and the Americas 29 (2009): 147-161. ·     This article has given me insight to the presence an informal economy within Oaxaca and women’s role within that informal economy. This article differentiates between paid and unpaid work that is dismissed by men and even women themselves. This article brings up important needs talk about access and control of market knowledge.
 * Cunningham, Wendy and Francisco Cos-Montiel. "Las encrucijadas del género y la cultura: impedimentos para el desarrollo económico en Oaxaca, Chiapas y Guerrero." 2001. ·     This article gives specific numbers and information regarding the challenges to entering the economy. It gives light to needs talk surrounding the intersection of gender and culture and how it perpetuates a lack of access to the market. It highlights two specific arguments that a lack of education and industrial sector lead women to work independently. This feeds in to the following source that discusses what women themselves are doing in response to these challenges.
 * Lynn, Stephen. "Women’s Weaving Cooperatives in Oaxaca: An Indigenous Response to Neoliberalism." Critique of Anthropology (2006): 253-278 ·     This readings shows how cooperatives are responding to a neoliberal environment. How they are able to undercut the monopolies held by imports and allow women to participate directly in their economy. This shift engages power and how women are using cooperatives to reshape the market and limit the power that inhibits their involvement in the market.

Sector

 * Leslie, David. "The Responsible Tourism Debate." Responsible Tourism. Ed. David Leslie. CABI, 2012. 17-42. ·     This article clearly defines Responsible Tourism and alternate definitions for similar ways in which people conduct themselves while traveling. It gives framework to the characteristics of Responsible tourism ‘
 * Anita, Pelumarom. "The Politics of Tourism and Poverty Reduction." Responsible Tourism. Ed. David Leslie. CABI, 2012. 90-106. ·     This article challenges the concept of tourism in general. It notes that it is inherently something that only privileged classes get to participate in and the notions of responsible tourism detract attention from what the industry needs right now which is reform. This article is bringing tourism into the public discursive space. This article is essential in developing my understanding for the complexities surrounding tourism and discourse about it.
 * Mihalic, Tanja. "Tourists’ accounts of responsible tourism." Journal of Cleaner Production (2016): 461-470. ·     This article gives descriptions and explanations for why individuals choose responsible tourism as opposed to other forms of tourism. It gives insightful information with regard to the facts that I will need to include in my Wikipedia post. The framework this article provides is helpful for understanding where people who decided to engage in responsible tourism are coming from. Understanding why people choose to engage in responsible tourism can help me to identify some gaps of populations that may not have access to such forms of traveling.



Women in the Economy of Oaxaca

 * I am beginning to learn that while women may be financially marginalized from the economy they play a very active role in the informal economy. Women participate in the informal economy primarily through agriculture and handicrafts. They are often taken advantage of financially through domestic services and in the craft sector. Women have been led to engage in substance business as they are unable to earn the same wages as men for the same services or products. There is evidence of women working in cooperatives and organizing to enact change.

Responsible Tourism

 * There are many terms used for tourism 'hard', 'soft', 'green', 'sustainable', and even 'eco'. My concentration is not so much on mitigating the environmental impacts as much as it is on the cultural and economic impact of the areas visited. I like the term responsible tourism because it calls tourists to be sensitive, understanding, and be contentious in each aspect of their tourist experience. From where they choose to stay, visit, eat, and shop.

Drafting
Words in non-bold are added by me. Words in bold are from the original wikipedia article.

Women in the Economy of Oaxaca
The state of Oaxaca has the highest rate (80 percent), in all of Mexico, of workers in the informal sector. Even though only 33 percent of women participate in the labor sector and almost one out of four women work unpaid jobs, the women in Oaxaca take on a variety of jobs in the formal and informal workforce sectors.

The shortage of opportunities in the formal labor market for women in Oaxaca is attributed to not only gender discrimination and their responsibilities within the home, but also geographical dispersion, and lack of market education. For indigenous women, the barriers are even higher as high rates of illiteracy and language barriers (Zapotec rather than Spanish) bar them from the job market.

Informal Economy
Women in Oaxaca have worked on the margins of the economy for centuries. Women often see their jobs as an extension of their household activities. These include jobs such as working on milpas (fields), huertas (kitchen gardens), or textile work. Notably, Oaxaca has accounted for more women in the informal economy than any other state in Mexico. Many men and women discount women's jobs because the tasks do not fit the typical perception of a job. Women, especially Zapotec women, have a history of working in agriculture. In the 1950s women took over agriculture as many of the men migrated to the United States for the bracero temporary work program. And yet, 70 percent of women working in agriculture in Oaxaca earned nothing for their efforts.

Women in Oaxaca often earn wages through domestic labor, the sale of food and artisanal products, or the production of goods. As of 2010, over 60,000 women in Oaxaca produce an income through domestic labor. This number has gone up from 40,000 in 1990, due to wealth stratification. Women continue to face barriers even in the artisan market where men are offered higher prices for their goods. A study shows that men were often offered over 75 percent more for their products than women.

Women have pushed back to the barriers presented in the Oaxaca economy. Some women have decided to join weaving, textile, and artisan cooperatives with strategic aims to undermine monopolies sustained by U.S. imports and local merchants. Involvement in such cooperatives has fostered opportunities for women to work collectively to market their goods to customers.

Migration
The geographic stratification of the rural areas in Oaxaca leads many women to migrate to the capital city in search of formal and informal jobs. Informal jobs often include: taxi cab driving, tour guiding and domestic service. Jobs in the formal economy include positions in restaurants hotels, and stores. These jobs are in great demand in the capital city which is home to the third highest degree of wealth inequality in all of Mexico. The capital city does offer opportunities for women involved in entrepreneurial activities such as selling good and services to tourists. This market, however, is highly unstable during seasons of low tourist numbers.

Responsible Tourism
There are many definitions and understandings of responsible tourism. According to the Center for Responsible Tourism, responsible tourism can be defined as, "tourism that maximizes the benefits to local communities, minimizes negative social or environmental impacts, and helps local people conserve fragile cultures and habitats or species." Responsible tourism incorporates not only responsibility with the physical environment, but also an incorporation of awareness for the economic and social interactions whereas, sustainable tourism focuses more on the environmental impacts. '''Responsible tourism is regarded as a behaviour. It is more than a form of tourism as it represents an approach to engaging with tourism, be that as a tourist, a business, locals at a destination or any other tourism stakeholder. It emphasizes that all stakeholders are responsible for the kind of tourism they develop or engage in.''' This ensures that the tourism service providers and purchasers or consumers are held accountable. '''Whilst different groups will see responsibility in different ways, the shared understanding is that responsible tourism should entail an improvement in tourism. Tourism should become ‘better’ as a result of the responsible tourism approach'''

'''Within the notion of betterment resides the acknowledgement that conflicting interests need to be balanced. However, the objective is to create better places for people to live in and to visit. Importantly, there is no blueprint for responsible tourism: what is deemed responsible may differ depending on places and cultures. Responsible Tourism is an aspiration that can be realized in different ways in different originating markets and in the diverse destinations of the world (Goodwin, 2002).[citation needed]'''

The concept of responsible tourism emerged following the environmental awareness that rose out of the 1960s and 70s amidst a growing phenomenon of “mass tourism”. The European Travel Commission in 1973 and a multilateral initiative to instate environmentally sound tourism and development was advanced. The United Nations specialized agency called the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), highlights the link between tourism and development in aims of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Given the dramatic increase in tourism, the report strongly promotes responsible tourism. Given the local based approach of Responsible Tourism, it can also incorporate local populations into the decision making and tourism planning process. While further research is needed to understand the impacts of responsible tourism, a study conducted in 2017 found that well-managed responsible tourism practices were beneficial to local communities.

Focusing in particular on businesses, according to the Cape Town Declaration on Responsible Tourism, it will have the following characteristics:


 * minimises negative economic, environmental, and social impacts
 * generates greater economic benefits for local people and enhances the well-being of host communities, improves working conditions and access to the industry
 * involves local people in decisions that affect their lives and life chances
 * makes positive contributions to the conservation of natural and cultural heritage, to the maintenance of the world’s diversity
 * provides more enjoyable experiences for tourists through more meaningful connections with local people, and a greater understanding of local cultural, social and environmental issues
 * provides access for people with disabilities and
 * is culturally sensitive, engenders respect between tourists and hosts, and builds local pride and confidence.

''' Sustainable tourism is where tourists can enjoy their holiday and at the same time respect the culture of people and also respect the environment. It also means that local people (such as the Masaai) get a fair say about tourism and also receive some money from the profit which the game reserve make. The environment is being damaged quite a lot by tourists and part of Sustainable tourism is to make sure that the damaging does not carry on.[citation needed] '''

 There are many private companies who are working into embracing the principles and aspects of Responsible Tourism, some for the purpose of Corporate Social Responsibility activities, and others such as SustainableVisit, responsibletravel.com, FairTravelR, and WorldHotel-Link, which was originally a project of the International Finance Corporation, have built their entire business model around responsible tourism, local capacity building and increasing market access for small and medium tourism enterprises.[citation needed] 

While widely acclaimed, responsible tourism has also been critiqued. Studies have shown that the degree to which individuals engage in responsible tourism is contingent upon their engagement socially. Meaning, tourist behaviors will fluctuate depending on the range of social engagement that each tourist chooses take part in. A study regarding responsible tourists behavior concludes that it is not only a personal behavior of tourists that shape outcomes, but also a reflection of mechanisms put in place by governments. Other research has put into question the promise that tourism even responsible tourism is inline with UN Sustainable Development Goals given the difficulties in measuring such impact. Some argue that actually detracts attention from the wider issues surrounding tourism that are in need of regulation, such as number of visitors and environmental impacts.

Reflections on Wiki Drafting
Area - Economy of Oaxaca


 * Created a new section for the page Women in the economy of Oaxaca made one edit to agriculture section
 * Added subsections of informal economy and migration
 * Added 9 sources, 7 academic sources

Sector - Responsible tourism


 * Added to existing section of Responsible Tourism under the Sustainable tourism Page
 * Removed chunks from section that advertised organizations that engage in responsible tourism (as it is against wikipedia policy to have such information on a page)
 * Added 9 sources, 8 academic sources