Researching sex tourism in the Philippines
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Anthropology PhD student Rosemary Wiss |
Anthropology PhD student Rosemary Wiss spent two years living in a beachside town in the Philippines to research its major trade - sex tourism.
Sex tourism has dominated the culture of Sabang Beach for more than 20 years. The community is inhabited by 1000 Filipinos; 300 bar girls who have been recruited from other provinces to work in Sabang's three go-go bars; an expatriate community of 350 Western men; and a transient population of between five to 700 tourists comprising mostly foreign males.
Conducting research
Living in a beachside tourist town might sound like an enjoyable way to conduct your research, but Wiss had many barriers to defeat.
"The first obstacle I had to overcome was the feeling of being watched and very, very unwelcome," Wiss says. "Every foreign man you bumped into on the street was middle aged and had a bar girl on their arm. These men responded with hostility, while the working girls were worried I was going to take off with their men."
At the outset, Wiss lived in a tourist bungalow and visited bars to get to know long-term residents of Sabang Beach. Once the reserve of these expatriates had lessened, she moved in with some of them. She then visited the bars every night, and people became more accustomed to her presence.
"In a large city like Bangkok or Manila you can't easily get access to people, it's more anonymous and the population is shifting. You end up relying on more formal techniques like interviewing rather than living with people," says Wiss. "I was living in this place, seeing people all day, and having breakfast and dinner with them. I was able to live intimately in this environment."
Thesis
Wiss' thesis deals with the relationships between Filipinos and foreigners and their complex interactions through tourism, sex tourism and expatriation. "My primary focus is on foreign men as tourists or expatriates," says Wiss. "In the past there has been little written on the customers of sex tourism, or the experience of expatriation."
Men who originally travelled to Sabang Beach for the transient and anonymous experience of sex tourism, have gone on to reside in the area, marrying Filipinas and producing children.
"This is not a simple mixing between two communities, as foreigners marry non-local women from the bars who are outside of local kinship relations," explains Wiss. "These men, who come for the ideal of the isolated tropical beach, compliant women, and an area free of politics, enter networks of intricate political and kinship connections - and disconnections."
These men are now beginning to transform the community and revise history by 'cleaning up' their reputations as sex tourists and aiming to become respected members of the community and kin to 'mixed' families.
A research first
This is the first piece of research from someone who has resided in a sex tourism community for an extended period of time to focus on foreign men. Wiss gained her PhD in April 2006 and the University of Washington Press has offered to publish her thesis as a book.
For further information contact Wiss' supervisor Dr Jennifer Biddle at jennifer.biddle@mq.edu.au or visit the Department of Anthropology website: www.anth.mq.edu.au/