Understanding and Interpreting the Concept of Dark Tourism - Essay Example

The Death Camps of Europe: History, Heritage & Dark Tourism Interpretation Understanding and interpreting the concept of dark tourism remains limited despite the increasing academic attention directed towards the field, especially from a consumption viewpoint. In other words, the current literature focuses mainly on supply of dark tourism; however, focusing less attention towards the demand for ‘dark’ touristic experiences (Alderman, 2002:29). This paper seeks to provide an evaluation of the dark tourism, and the associated consequences for consumers, policy makers, and managers based on a conceptual ‘genocide’ framework. The paper further proposes a dark tourism consumption model within a thanatological framework as the foundation for further empirical and theoretical interpretation and analysis of dark tourism (DeSpelder and Strickland, 2002:97). Introduction The experience of and travel to places associated with genocide and death is not a new concept in the tourism world. For centuries now, people have been long attracted, purposefully or other, towards events or sites linked with suffering, death, disaster, or violence (Byock, 2002:283). Consider the Roman gladiatorial games, attendance, or pilgrimage at medieval public executions were the early forms of death-related tourism, while the first guided tour in England was a trip to witness the hanging of two convicted murders (Deak, 2001:112). Similarly, other authors note that visits to morgue became a regular feature in the nineteenth century tourism in Paris probably a precursor to the ‘Bodyworlds’ exhibitions in Tokyo, London, and other places, which have attracted tens of thousands of visitors since the late twentieth century (Bodyworlds, 2006). Some scholars suggest that destinations or sites associated with war constitute the largest category of the world’s tourist attractions, yet war-related attractions are a subset of the total tourist sites associated with suffering and death. Reference is often made to specific destinations and sites such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, or to the forms of tourism, such as atrocities, graveyards, prisons, slavery-heritage tourism, or the holocaust. Nonetheless, this is the diversity associated with death-related attractions from the Vienna’s Funeral Museum for the ‘famous’ deaths or the Dracula Experience in the UK, or other major disasters such as Ground Zero (Bly, 2003). This implicitly implies that a full categorization is extremely complex. Interestingly, only recently did the academic attention focus upon dark tourism, despite the increasing contemporary evidence and long history of travel to attractions and sites associated with death. However, there have been various attempts to label or define death-related tourism, including such terms as black spot, morbid, thanatourism, or milking the macabre (Dann and Seaton, 2001:127). Scholars have directed further attempts to analyzing specific manifestation of dark tourism, from genocide sites and political ideologies to the commemorations to the war museums employing both contemporary and traditional methods of representation. Consequently, attention also focuses on the motivation of visitors in seeking such experiences or sites, including suggested drivers varying from morbid curiosity to collective sense of survival or identity faced by violent disruptions of collective life routines. All the same, the available literature, remains relatively theoretical and eclectic. In other words, numerous fundamental issues remain unsolved, especially the possibility or justifiability of collectively categorizing the experience of attractions of sites associated with suffering or death as ‘dark tourism’ (Durkin, 2003:44). Specifically, it remains unclear whether dark tourism is driven by supply or demand, or generally as a manifestation of what experts refer to as grief tourism. To effectively interpret and address questions related to the field, it is important to understand tourist behaviours as far as dark attractions and sites are concerned (Harrison, 2003:64). As earlier stated, there are various proposed motives in the literature, comprehensively explained by experts under eight influence categories, including the search for novelty, fear of phantoms, basic bloodlust, and nostalgia, celebration of deviance or crime, or dicing with death (Caplan, 2009:2). Dark Tourism Dark tourism is a niche tourism type in which tourists essentially target exhibitions or destinations highlighting atrocities, morbid suffering, or death. Tourism experts also refer to it as black tourism due to its emphasis on the oppressive or nefarious aspects of historical places or events. The field has recorded significant growth in the past decades, in the modern niche tourism. Among the popular dark tourism sites in Europe, include the London Dungeon, Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp, and Zone of Alienation in Ukraine (Miles, 2002:1176). Academics interpret dark tourism differently, with a faction focusing on the general auspices that disregard measures of intent in their definition. For instance, some classify World War 2 concentration camps or haunted houses in Europe as dark tourist attraction sites, arguing that these emphasize the frightening or tragic moments of human history (Spielvogel, 2010:595). Other academics however, make a clear distinction between other types of adjectival tourism and dark tourism, subsequently narrowing the definition to include attractions and exhibitions primarily associated with morbid or gruesome historical exhibits or events that appeal to the curious, darker side of the human nature (Seaton and Lennon, 2004:75). Contemporary Society and Death Traditionally, sociology focuses on problems associated with life, entirely neglecting the subject of death. Nonetheless, death is an essential feature of the human condition, as suggested by seminal texts, thus requires individuals to develop mechanisms of coping with the demise. Scholars like Berger argue that neglecting death is similar to ignoring one of the basic parameters of both individual and collective self-construction (Mortimer, 2001:89). Other scholars argue that death is slowly creeping back into the social consciousness of the society, suggesting that time has come to analyse death without narrow-mindedness. For that reason, the contemporary society can never deny death completely, despite the continued disavow in its inevitability. Indeed, today’s society increasingly consumes, either willingly or unwillingly, commoditised and real suffering and death through the media, popular culture, or audio-visual representation (Duiker and Spielvogel, 2006:705). Of course, the cultural framework within which Western individuals design coping mechanisms to counter human finitude is a contested term, especially with reference to sociological discourse on post modernity and modernity (Atkinson, 2005). However, it is improper to interpret contemporary societies based on the new, radical type of social world, which disregards characteristics of modernity. Rather, scholars suggest that social life forges from modern concerns, despite the fact that the implications are only becoming apparent now (Beech, 2000:34). This perspective points to a particular, significant character of the contemporary society correlated with mortality and death: namely, the perceived erosion of rational order and personal meaningfulness propelled by privatization of sequestration and meaning of death within public realms. While discussion mortality and its contemplation, another critical feature of western society appears in the extensive de-sacralisation of social life, which failed to replace religious certainties with scientific certainties (Sheehan, 2001:45). The negation of religion and subsequent increased belief in science provides people with the possibility of exerting a sense of control over their lives, but fails to provide valuable guides in life, thus leaving individuals vulnerable to the feelings of isolation, particularly when contemplating on end to life and death projects (Lennon and Foley, 2000:134). In this regard, therefore, secularization of life should be ideally accompanied by secularization of death, as to live in eth modern society is to also die in it. The social neutralization of death, considered as a means of boosting ontological security and bracketing dread helps in moderating the disruptive implication of death of individuals. Similarly, dark tourism remains a pervasive feature of the popular cultural landscape (Leming and Dickinson, 2002:76). Based on the political, cultural, and social context, dark tourism may be educational, humorous, or fascinating. However, the consumption of death tends to have an inverse ratio to the declining direct experience of death, thus; dark tourism in a ‘genocide’ framework may assist in explaining the contemporary approaches to contemplation of mortality and vice versa. Essentially, dark tourism permits the re-conceptualization of mortality and death into forms that stimulate other feelings apart from dread and primordial terror (Tarlow, 2005:53). Despite the decreasing death, experience due to institutional sequestration in the current society, scholars argue that people are spectators to more deaths than any other historical generation, driven by both represented and real images; people see death but do not touch it (Blom, 2000:32). Thus, consumers have to refer to their individual resources when looking for meanings to deal with the limits of individual existence. It follows that dark tourism in its different repackaged and camouflaged manifestation allows individuals to indulge their fascination and curiosity with thanatological concerns in socially acceptable manner and within sanctioned environment. This enables them to construct their individual contemplation of death and mortality (Krakover, 2005:113). We may further argue that dark tourism individualizes, and thus fragments the definition and meaning of death. Indeed, while people consume the dark tourist product, they get exposure to cause of suffering and death of individual people in individual circumstances, hence perhaps encouraging the perception of death as contingent and unavoidable (Perry, Berg, and James, 2009:230). According to Baumann, such kinds of deaths are reassuring rather than threatening, as they orient people on the strategies of survival rather than emphasizing on the awareness of human futility of the life strategies imposed by mortality (Lisle, 2004:16). Given the diversity of dark tourism and the needs, expectations, and experience of visitors, as well as other socio-cultural and economic circumstances of individuals, the potential effectiveness of the consumption of dark tourism as a primary mechanism of for understanding, confronting, and accepting death varies significantly. For instance, we may argue that sites of mass disasters, war cemeteries, memorials to multiple and individual deaths or acts of sacrifice present a more positive and powerful means of confronting death than other attractions such as houses of horror (Muzaini, Teo, and Yeoh, 2007:33) A visit to Gallipoli, where mass graves of fallen lie above the cliffs and beaches, is certainly a more meaningful and emotive experience, verifying the popularised and cultural representation of eth tragic event. Similarly, the proposed ‘Mountains of Remembrance’ for the Tsunami tragedy in Khao Lak-Lam Ru in Thailand may significantly provide a focus for contemplation, survival, hope, and mourning (Gerfen, 2006). On the other hand, contemporary tourists to such places as Auschwitz, the Nazi death, perhaps the archetype of a dark tourist attraction, may occur out of curiosity or maybe because it is the thing to do, rather than for more meaningful purposes. The latter point may essentially result in any meaning of mortality within the current society as consequential to the visit (Henderson, 2000:272). In simpler terms, tourists may implicitly deduct meanings of mortality from visits to dark sites rather than explicitly seek out contemplation on death and dying as a motivation to visit these sites. Moreover, the mortality meaning level depends on the socio-cultural background of the individual as well as varying intensities of darkness as perceived from the dark experience or product (Romano, 2010:203). It then follows that policymakers and managers may focus on making dark tourism a product that revives death within the public domain, thus de-sequestering mortality and making absent death present, transforming private death into a communal commodity and public discourse upon which the public may gaze (Sharpley, 2005:220). Consequently, this may transform dark tourism to offer new social institutions that acknowledge the functional value of mortality and death, appreciation of its precariousness, as well as to assure that ontological security and well-being is a source of entertainment, humour, and playfulness as well as memorial and education. On the other hand, consumption may allow individuals to create a sense of understanding and meaning of past macabre events and disasters that perturbed life projects (Lennon, J. 2005). The new meaning and understanding may subsequently support the fragility of the individual’s survival strategy (Axelrod, 1999:17). In this regard therefore, consumers, managers, and policymakers need to understand that dark tourism may transform the seemingly worthless into meaningful through explanations, representation, and commodification of darkness that affect the collective self. In turn, this may allow individuals to contemplate and confront their own mortality by looking at the macabre images and illusions (Ashworth and Hartmann, 2005:67). The subsequent contemplation of mortality and confrontation of death, within a socially acceptable dark tourism environment, may possibly bracket out the dread that death inevitably brings, by equipping the individual with information and potential meaning and understanding. Nonetheless, it is possible that particular dark sites fail to provide a meaningful sense that a particular tourist seeks, hence negating the effectiveness of the entire bracketing process and the ability to shield oneself against dread threats (Marcuse, 2001:105). Even so, death with the dark tourism becomes real for the individual. Accordingly, the representation of real occurs so that the represented may become real. In other words, real actual death in dark tourism is commodified in the dark sites to become existentially valid and thus inevitable. 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