The Darker Side of Travel: The Theory and Practice of Dark Tourism

Citation

Korstanje, M.E. (2012), "The Darker Side of Travel: The Theory and Practice of Dark Tourism", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 24 No. 1, pp. 160-162. https://doi.org/10.1108/09596111211197854

Dark tourism can be seen as the legacy of a thanatopic tradition whose roots cannot be yet determined with accuracy by experts. Some scholars consider the current fascination for death stems from Middle Ages and the habit of visiting graves and cemeteries during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Seaton, 1996, 1999) while others dwelled on the role played by the mass media as the prerequisite for creating tourist spots which concentrate on disasters and human catastrophes (Lennon and Foley, 2000). Ranging from genocides towards made‐man disasters, dark tourism becomes in an issue that has drawn the attention of scholars in recent years. Under such a context, the book edited, by two recognized specialists, Richard Sharpley and Phillip Stone, entitled The Darker Side of Travel, focuses on thanatourism and dark tourism from their inceptions considering all anthropological factors that lead a subject to visit a site wherein others have been tortured and violently exterminated.

In the introductory chapters of this valuable book, Sharpley and Stone emphasize the needs of outlining certain conceptual boundaries and scope to dissociate dark tourism from other types of similar activities. Quite aside from this, thanatourism can be defined as an extrinsic fascination not in the manner but in the meaning of mass death. This of course emulates a staged experience reminiscent of the event not as it happened, but enrooted inside a much wider discourse. As something else than a play, this experience evokes a common shared celebration that tightens up the social bondage of participants linking people somehow with death. Following the contributions of Lennon and Folley, this work proposes that thanaptosis is a key factor in understanding the convergence between supply and demand in thanatourism (matrix of dark tourism).

This book is based on two contrasting assumptions. On the one hand, dark tourism is determined by the encounter between supply and demand to the extent that it stimulates in ordinary people the suffering of others as a form of mass consumption. On another, it is hypothesized that a much broader structure exerts considerable influence in considering death as a form of cultural entertainment. Combining these striking ideas, four grids are resulted from this scheme:

1. 1.

   pale tourism, which is formed by consumers with minimal interests in death;

2. 2.

   grey tourism demand, which refers to tourists with a higher degree of fascination in visiting “unintended dark tourism sites”;

3. 3.

   grey tourism supply means to those sites which intentionally are aimed at exploiting the spectacle of death; and

4. 4.

   black tourism, which is no other than the fascination for death that creates a psychological need satisfied by an specific demand.

In this vein, second and third chapters are centered on the sociological understanding of death and its impacts in Western societies. The ever‐changing process of secularization would be desacralizing public life to the extent of replacing religious beliefs with science. Following the argument in this book, one might speculate that the secularization of life seems to be accompanied by a secularization of death. Based on the concepts of ontological security coined by Giddens (1991), these sections demonstrate how the needs of security and protection have been anchored to give meaning and order to day‐to‐day social practices. This sort of meaningfulness is ambiguously determined by the presence of death. In order to adjust the cognitive imbalances triggered by death, societies refer to ideology, which expands a depiction of life inevitably linked to youth, beauty, aesthetic, and the body. These beliefs repress the thought of death. It is worthwhile seeing that fascination for the suffering of others is a rite for what sightseers avoid the danger themselves. Late modernity has certainly started an irreversible process of individualization where people are bereft, isolated before to their own end. Following this perspective, thanatourism would be an efficient response aimed at reducing to the existent anxiety of citizenry. Since classical religion is now unable to provide coherent answers to the question of life, people seek to reduce their uncertainness in alternative ways offered by the market.

Although this book provides readers with an illustrative framework with respect to the connection between humankind with death, to some extent it fails to explain the historical role played by ethnocentrism in these types of issues. This begs an interesting question: “Is dark tourism a type of implicit sadism or a form of commercialization based on curiosity for tragic past?”. Death is one of the events in this world that terrifies human beings simply because it is uncontrollable. After a state of disaster tourism plays a pivotal role in the process of recovery providing survivors with a political discourse that enhances their own sentiment of superiority over others (Korstanje, 2010). Based on the assumptions that empires have historically elaborated a narrative of disasters to gain more legitimacy, we argue that ethnocentrism is the primary motive why thanatourism entices thousand of visitors. Disasters awaken emotional and moral strengths in devastated communities. Four elements are of importance in the genesis of dark tourism are:

1. 1.

   a wider curiosity for the suffering of others;

2. 2.

   a sentiment based on the fear of death;

3. 3.

   a political discourse attached to ethnocentrism; and

4. 4.

   as a form of resilience, dark tourism allows survivors to intellectualize the principle of contingency.

It is ultimately important to denote that sentiment of superiority is a key factor, which still remains underdeveloped in the specialized literature, to understand how dark tourism operates. Anyway, this book is strongly recommended to a wide audience of readers ranging from academics, students, researchers, and professionals who are interested in developing the connection between death and tourism.