Dark Tourism

Ever since he can remember, Dom Joly has been fascinated by travel to odd places. In part this stems from a childhood spent in war-torn Lebanon, where instead of swapping marbles in the schoolyard, he had a shrapnel collection -- the schoolboy currency of Beirut. Dom's upbringing was interspersed with terrifying days and nights spent hunkered in the family basement under Syrian rocket attack or coming across a pile of severed heads from a sectarian execution in the pine forests near his home. These early experiences left Dom with a profound loathing for the sanitized experiences of the modern day travel industry and a taste for the darkest of places. In this brilliantly odd and hilariously told travel memoir, Dom Joly sets out on a quest to visit those destinations from which the average tourist would, and should, run a mile. The more insalubrious the place, the more interesting is the journey and so we follow Dom as he skis in Iran on segregated slopes, spends a weekend in Chernobyl, tours the assassination sites of America and becomes one of the few Westerners to be granted entry into North Korea. Eventually Dom journeys back to his roots in Beirut only to discover he was at school with Osama Bin Laden. Funny and frightening in equal measure, this is a uniquely bizarre and compelling travelogue from one of the most fearless and innovative comedians around.

Dark tourism has become widespread and diverse. It has passed into popular culture vernacular, deployed in guide books as a short hand descriptor for sites that are associated with death, suffering and trauma. However, whilst books have been devoted to dark tourism as a general topic no single text has sought to explore dark tourism in spaces where crime - mass murder, genocide, State sanctioned torture and violence - has occurred as an organising theme. Dark Tourism and Crime explores the socio-cultural contours of this unique type of tourism and explains why spaces/places where crime has occurred fascinate and attract tourists. The book is marked by an ethics of respect for the suffering a place has experienced and an imperative to learn something tangible about the history and legacy of that suffering. Based on empirical ethnographic research it takes the reader from the remnants of Auschwitz concentration camp to the tranquil Australian island of Tasmania to explore precisely what things a dark tourist might encounter - architecture, art installations, gardens, memorials, physical traces of crime - and how these things invoke and evoke past crimes. This volume furthers understanding of dark tourism and will be of interest to students, researchers and academics of criminology, tourism and cultural studies.

Dark Tourism is the practice of visiting sites associated with death. While participation increases, dark tourism remains a mystery, regarded as the tourist industry’s dirty little secret. This book challenges the misconceptions of a ghoulish practice through the eyes of a self-confessed dark tourist, who has spent forty years visiting the world’s dark sites. From the cobbled streets of Whitechapel on a Jack The Ripper walking tour to the snowy suicide forest of Aokigahara, Japan, H. E. Sawyer ticks off the darkest sites on earth. He visits locations that have promoted themselves to become major tourist attractions, contrasting with those dark places that seek to remain hidden from view. In the course of his travels he wrestles with the ultimate question regarding dark tourism; why would anyone want to visit sites touched by death in the first place?

Dark Tourism, as well as other terms such as Thanatourism and Grief Tourism, has been much discussed in the past two decades. This volume provides a comprehensive exploration of the subject from the point of view of both practice - how Dark Tourism is performed, what practical and physical considerations exist on site - and interpretation - how Dark Tourism is understood, including issues pertaining to ethics, community involvement and motivation. It showcases a wide range of examples, drawing on the expertise of academics with management and consultancy experience, as well as those from within the social sciences and humanities. Contributors discuss the historical development of Dark Tourism, including its earlier incarnations across Europe, but they also consider its future as a strand within academic discourse, as well as its role within tourism development. Case studies include holocaust sites in Germany, as well as analysis of the legacy of war in places such as the Channel Islands and Malta. Ethical and myriad marketing considerations are also discussed in relation to Ireland, Brazil, Rwanda, Romania, U.K., Nepal and Bosnia-Herzegovina. This book covers issues that are of interest to students and staff across a spectrum of disciplines, from management to the arts and humanities, including conservation and heritage, site management, marketing and community participation.

This book provides original, innovative, and international tourism research that is embedded in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary theoretical and methodological thought in the study of dark tourism. It is almost 25 years since the idea of dark tourism was introduced and presented into the field of tourism studies. The impact of this idea was greater, which attracted a great deal of attention from different researchers and practitioners with a good range of disciplines and farther tourism studies. This edited volume aims to capture a glimpse of the types of cutting-edge thinking and academic research in the domain of dark tourism studies as well as encourage and advance theoretical, conceptual, and empirical research on dark tourism. The book also addresses several future research directions focusing on the experience and emotions of visitors at ‘dark tourism’ sites. This book will be valuable reading for students, researchers and academics interested in dark tourism. Other interested stakeholders including those in the tourism industry, government bodies and community groups will also find this volume relevant. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Heritage Tourism.

This book takes the concept of “dark tourism”—journeys to sites of death, suffering, and calamity—in an innovative yet essential direction by applying it to the virtual realms of literature, film and television, the Internet, and gaming. Essays focus both on the creative construction of imaginary journeys and the historiographic and civic consequences of such memorializations. From World War II time-travel novels to Game of Thrones, and from Internet reproductions of Rwandan genocide locations to invented tragedies in futuristic domains, authors from various fields examine the purpose and influence of simulated travels to morbid sites. Designed for a wide audience of scholars and travelers virtual and real, this volume raises awareness about the many pathways through which we encounter death experiences in contemporary society. What we know about the past—or, what we think we know about it—is shaped daily by such imagined journeys as these.

Over the last decade, the concept of dark tourism has attracted growing academic interest and media attention. Nevertheless, perspectives on and understanding of dark tourism remain varied and theoretically fragile whilst, to date, no single book has attempted to draw together the conceptual themes and debates surrounding dark tourism, to explore it within wider disciplinary contexts and to establish a more informed relationship between the theory and practice of dark tourism. This book meets the undoubted need for such a volume by providing a contemporary and comprehensive analysis of dark tourism.