Whilst a great deal of tourism literature contemplates the marketing and consumption of
pleasant diversion to pleasant places (Strange and Kempa, 2003), a number of authors (see for
example Beech, 2000; Cole, 1999; Lennon and Foley, 2000 and Seaton, 1996; 1998) have
explored the antithesis of such creeds; the commodification of death, suffering and tragedy.
The nexus between war, death, tragedy and tourism according to Seaton (1998: 131) is a
phenomenon which has existed for centuries as a unique form of travel to locations ‘...wholly,
or partially, motivated by the desire for actual or symbolic encounters with death’. To date,
research into dark tourism as a form of cultural consumption has examined the movement of
visitors to sites associated with recent and historic incidences of death. Classification
frameworks for such sites have been offered in the literature (see Lennon and Foley, 2000 and
Smith, 1998 for examples) into, for example, a binary of ‘primary’ sites, such as holocaust
camps and sites of celebrity deaths and ‘secondary sites’ offering interpretations of events
away from the physical spaces at which these originally occurred. Seaton (1998:131) examines
the significance of the latter category (secondary sites, such as museums and memorials) and
suggests five motivations for travelling to these as:
1. Travel to witness public enactments of death
2. Travel to see sites of mass or individual deaths after they have occurred
3. Travel to internment sites of, and memorials to, the dead
4. Travel to view material evidence/symbolic representations of particular deaths
Some contention surrounds the issue of a chronological context for dark tourism attractions.
Lennon and Foley (2000) pursue research into dark tourism sites associated with events that
are within ‘living memory’ and they dismiss, as ontologically tenuous, those that are not, whilst
Seaton (1998) suggests that the phenomenon is a present day manifestation of cultural
practices that have existed for centuries such as organised pilgrimages and visits to ‘cabinets of
curiosity’. Other early contributors to the dark tourism paradigm include Tunbridge and
Ashworth (1996) and Dwork and Van Pelt (1997) who explore the reticence of some
destinations and cultural groups to confront ‘dissonant’ or contested heritage and they focus
attention on dilemmas linked to the authenticity of the past and the visitor experience at dark
heritage sites. Dissonance, in a heritage context refers to the contestation over particular
landscapes or objects which can often lead to a plurality of interpretations (Dwok and Van
Pelt:bid). A further contextualised definition for this thesis is offered by Smith (2006) who
suggests that dissonance is integral to all heritage since the the showcasing of interpretive
objects and landscapes is ultimately an expression of identity and ‘not just who you are, but
also who others are not’ (Ibid:192). Further interest stemmed from the idea of dissonance
particularly in relation to the management and manipulation of cultural landscapes to
accommodate tourism activity, with reference to how death, war and tragedy as heritage
‘products’ should be interpreted, and indeed sold as ‘experience’ to visitors. The management
of ‘dark’ sites is contentious (Stone, 2012) as is the issue of how histories and ‘truth’ should be
presented to visitors to these sites. The motivations to visit dark tourism sites have also been
considered in the literature (see for example Seaton, 1996 and Yuill, 2003) and amongst the
suggested motivations are curiosity (Lennon and Foley, 2000) and education (Strange and
Kempa, 2003 and Smith, 1998). Rojek (1993) suggests that amongst these motivations might
be some form of voyeuristic enjoyment or ‘schandenfreude’ (taking pleasure in the misfortune
The definition of dark tourism has also been extended to visits to prisons (Strange and Kempa,
2003) and labour camps associated with World War II (Beechm 2000). The geographic reach of
the research in terms of case examples of dark tourism that have been analysed takes in the
UK and Europe, Vietnam and Cambodia (Henderson, 2000), Japan (Siegentahler, 2002), Africa
and the United States (Shackley 2001 and Strange and Kempa, 2003). Research approaches
have included Beech’s (2000) tendency towards the longitudinal, chronological approach
advanced by Seaton (1998) in his suggestion that the phenomenon of dark tourism (in
particular, the selection of military buildings as tourism sites) is far from being a new idea since
every major European city of mediaeval or earlier origin boasts a defensive wall or castle and
these feature quite typically in conventional ‘city tours’. From a marketing perspective, Kotler
(1994, cited in Beech, 2000) suggests the dark tourism ‘product’, and particularly visits to
European Holocaust sites, can be analysed in terms of niche segments and visitor typologies.
He suggests that two distinct visitor types can be identified that are buying quite different
experiences with unique product life-cycles. The first of these are survivors, for whom the
product lifecycle will come to a natural conclusion in the early decades of this century as raw
emotion and memory become diluted over time. The second of these is the ‘leisure’ tourist for
whom the product lifecycle is less predictable and more of a function of marketing efforts.
Beech (2000) suggests lessons which can be drawn from his analysis of holocaust camps as
tourist attractions including observations that interpretation serves to complement a purely
commemorative aspect of the attraction and the motivation of visitors to ‘dark’ sites is difficult
to classify and makes an unrealistic assumption that all who visit such sites are tourists
indulging in some form of leisure activity. He further suggests that, as tourist attractions,
former concentration camps are not in any broad sense directly comparable with other
tourism products yet over time, some of these sites may become conventional attractions as
memories fade and using this logic, Culloden Battlefield in Scotland might be considered one
Smith, (1998:205) develops on the last of Beech’s observations arguing that war is a
penetrating societal involvement that is:
“So deeply imbedded in human activity and memory that despite the horrors and destruction (and also because of them), the memorabilia of warfare and allied products… probably constitutes the single largest category of tourist attraction in the world”
Smith presents an ethnography of Americans (from the United States) in relation to the
phenomenon of dark tourism using a discursive methodology and she describes the
emergence of this kind of tourism over time using a Foucauldian genealogical approach that
accentuates the importance of war in discursive formations and the possibility that there is,
and will always be, an intrinsic relationship between war and tourism. The concept of
discursive formation is central to this thesis, and is the subject of a comprehensive
methodological discussion in chapter 4.