Dark Tourism

Dark Tourism

Dark Tourism

The term 'dark tourism' was first coined by (Foley and Lennon, 2008), subsequently evolving the name of a publication that, arguably, remains the most broadly cited study of the occurrence. Their work was not although the first to focus upon the relationship between tourism and death, if brutal, untimely or otherwise. Sites associated with conflict and atrocities have long been considered inside a broader heritage tourism context, especially from an interpretative perspective. For demonstration, Lennon (2008) argues for the 'hot' understanding of conflict and confrontation (interpretation that is as intense or passionate as the site/event), whilst Lisle's (2006) subsequent work on 'dissonant heritage' develops an significant conceptual structure for the administration of such sites. More lately, Wight and Lennon (2008) analyze selective understanding inside specific dark heritage sites in Lithuania, suggesting that 'moral complexities' ensure significant epochs of history stay unchallenged and un-interpreted in the nations' collective commemoration of the past. Similarly, address historical correctness and understanding at Singapore's Fort Siloso, contending that dark tourism privileges the 'visual' and 'experiential' over the require for historical rigour.

Psychological State

In contrast, Seaton (2006) argues that dark tourism has a long history, appearing from what he refers to as a 'thanatoptic tradition' (the contemplation of death) that dates back to the Middle Ages but that intensified throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with visits to, for demonstration, the battlefield of Waterloo. He proposes that thanatourism is the 'travel dimension of thanatopsis', characterised as 'travel to a position wholly, or partially, inspired by the desire for genuine or symbolic encounters with death, especially, but not exclusively, brutal death'. (Lennon, 2008)Importantly, he also suggests that than tourism is essentially a behavioral occurrence characterised by tourists' motives, and that a 'continuum of intensity' exists reliant upon the differing motives for visiting a site and the span to which the interest in death is general or person-specific. Thus, visits to disaster sites, such as Ground Zero are a 'purer' pattern of thanatourism (as long as the visitor was not associated to a victim) than, say, visiting the serious of a dead relative. There are also, as asserted by Seaton, just five possible categories of dark journey undertaking, including: to witness public enactments of death; to sites of one-by-one or mass deaths; to memorials or internment sites; to see symbolic representations of death; and, to witness re-enactments of death.(Sharpley, 2005)

Given the adversity in adhering an ...