The purpose of this article is to use the household as an analytical construct in order to examine how the process of labor transformation in the tourism industry is experienced within the immediate circumstances of workers in three coastal towns in Turkey. I argue that the recent growth of the tourism industry in Turkey absorbs a major portion of its labor force from agriculture, and factors such as the scale of operation, maintenance of links to the rural background, and the social composition of tourism workers yield different patterns of labor transformation. The best site for evaluating these patterns of labor transformation is the household, which provides access to social as well as economic aspects of labor transformation. Household analysis explains the complexity of labor transformation due to the coexistence of traditional forms of production and the market economy. The article is based on ethnographic evidence on household structures, household composition and division of labor in three coastal towns.
