Journal of Vacation Marketing

Volume 12 Number 2

Philosophical and methodological praxes in

dark tourism: Controversy, contention and the
evolving paradigm
A. Craig Wight
Received (in revised form): April 2005
Anonymously refereed paper
Moffat Centre for Travel and Tourism Business Development, Glasgow Caledonian University,
Cowcaddens Road, Glasgow G4 0BA, UK
Tel: (44) 141 331 8400; Fax: (44) 141 331 8411; E-mail: cwi2@gcal.ac.uk

Craig Wight is a research assistant in the Moffat

Centre for Travel and Tourism Business Development. Craig has conducted research into dark
tourism for the past two years and also has research interests in culinary tourism and sustainable tourism. The Moffat Centre is a unique
centre which has undertaken key consultancy
and contract research projects in the travel and
tourism industry. The Centre and its increasing
staff-base provide expertise to tourism development projects across Scotland, the UK and internationally.

Forgetting the extermination is part of the

extermination itself Jean Baudrillard
ABSTRACT
KEYWORDS: authenticity, dark tourism, interpretation, qualitative research, quantitative research, methodologies

The following article will examine examples of

current and theoretical issues in academic and
related literature written on the subject of what has
been variously referred to as dark tourism (Lennon
and Foley 1 ), thanatourism (Seaton2 ) and sometimes, atrocity heritage (Beech3 ). Although much
has been written on these subjects, little comment
has been made on the types and relevance of research
methods and analytical frameworks used in existing
academic enquiry. The article comments on a cross

section of publications written on this subject in the

context of philosophical issues, research methodologies, emerging paradigms in the topic, contemporary debate and controversies. An introduction to
dark tourism is presented followed by a broad
definition that considers the apocryphal issue of the
origins of this subject in academic debate. Reflections on current research are presented, specifically
research into issues of visitor interpretation and the
representation of themes to the visiting public which
can be considered dark. A key observation is that
most research in dark tourism has been qualitative
in terms of methodologies adopted by researchers
given the relevance of conceptual sociological issues
that have arisen out of academic debate. However,
the article finishes by considering potential usage of
quantitative inquiry that could logically build upon
the emerging, qualitative-driven paradigm. This
article draws on an understanding of various approaches to research including epistemological and
ontological positioning and the justification and
application of research methods as they relate to
findings.

INTRODUCTION
While a great deal of tourism literature contemplates the marketing and consumption of
pleasant diversion in pleasant places (Strange
and Kempa4 ), a number of authors have begun to explore the antithesis of such creeds;
the commodification of death, suffering and

Journal of Vacation Marketing

Vol. 12 No. 2, 2006, pp. 119129
& SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks, CA,
and New Delhi.
www.sagepublications.com
DOI: 10.1177/1356766706062151

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Philosophical and methodological praxes in dark tourism

tragedy. The nexus between war, death,

tragedy and tourism, according to Seaton,5 is
a phenomenon that has existed for centuries.
Fundamentally, research into dark tourism as
an academic subject has examined the movement of visitors to sites associated with recent and historic incidences of death and
disaster. These sites have been classified in
literature (Lennon and Foley6 and Smith7 )
into primary sites, such as holocaust camps
to sites of celebrity deaths, and secondary
sites commemorating tragedy and death,
indicating the potential usefulness of positivist research into these categories. Seaton,8
examines the significance of the latter category (secondary sites, such as museums and
memorials) and lists five motivations for
travelling to these as:
Travel to witness public enactments of
death
Travel to see sites of mass or individual
deaths after they have occurred
Travel to internment sites of, and memorials to, the dead
Travel to view material evidence/symbolic representations of particular deaths
Travel for re-enactments or simulation of
death.
Some contention surrounds the issue of a
chronological context for dark tourism attractions. Lennon and Foley9 pursue research
into dark sites associated with events that are
within living memory, while Seaton10 insists that the phenomenon is a present day
discursive formation of practices that have
existed for some time (including pilgrimage
and cabinets of curiosity in the UK). Such
contention is indicative of epistemological
stances adopted by the pioneering authors
who have contemplated the relevance of
meta-narrative and pluralism in early and
subsequent research. Indeed, post-modernism has been a ubiquitous philosophical
consideration in a number of academic publications, as outlined later in this article.
ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION
The origins of academic commentary and
interest into dark tourism may have arisen

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out of the work of Tunbridge and

Ashworth,11 Dwork and Van Pelt12 and Lennon and Foley.13 These authors have explored the reticence of some destinations and
cultural groups to confront dissonant or inharmonious heritage and they have hypothesized on the authenticity of the past and the
visitor experience at dark heritage sites.
Further comments were made in these publications on the management and manipulation of cultural landscapes to accommodate
tourism activity, with reference to sites presenting death, war and tragedy inter alia to
the visiting public. Such academic contention has led to subsequent debate surrounding contemporary issues such as the
management of dark sites, interpretation of
these sites and the motivation of the public
to visit (including curiosity and education,
see Strange and Kempa,14 and Smith15 ).
Rojek16 describes visitor reactions to some
sites as private enjoyment of pleasure in the
events associated with those sites, intimating
that schandenfreude (taking pleasure in the
misfortune of others) is a common motivation for visitors to such dark sites.
The context of the subject has widened to
include academic inquiry into visitation to
most sites associated with the dark side of
human nature including prisons (Strange and
Kempa17 ) and labour camps associated with
World War II. The notion is not an entirely
western one, indeed some research has been
conducted into dark heritage in non-western
countries, for example Vietnam and Cambodia (Henderson18 ), Japan (Siegenthaler19 ),
Africa and the USA (Shackley20 ; Strange and
Kempa21 ). Beech22 places himself as a proponent of the longitudinal chronological approach suggested by Seaton23 asserting that
the phenomenon of dark tourism (in particular, the selection of military buildings as
tourism sites) is far from being a new idea:
Every major European city of mediaeval
origin or earlier boasts its wall and/or
castle, and it comes as no surprise that they
feature in the conventional city tour.
Kotler (1994 in Beech24 ) suggests the dark
tourism product can be analysed in terms of
market segments and visitor typologies at

Wight

holocaust sites. The product, he suggests, is

broken down into three levels:

Beechs observations arguing that war is a

penetrating societal involvement that is:

The core product (what the customer is

actually buying)
The tangible product (an entity which
customers buy to meet their needs)
The augmented product (the total product package including all the tangible
and intangible additional services and
benefits which the customer receives).

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.

The author suggests that two groups of

visitors to such sites can be identified and
that they are buying distinctly different products with distinctly different product lifecycles. These are listed as:
1. Survivors, for whom the product lifecycle will come to a natural conclusion in
the early decades of this century as raw
emotion and memory becomes diluted
over time
2. The general leisure tourist for whom
the product lifecycle is less predictable
and more of a function of marketing
efforts.
The author further 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
The motivation of tourists visiting dark
sites is difficult to classify and makes an
unrealistic assumption that all who visit
are tourists indulging in a leisure activity
As a tourist attraction, a concentration
camp is 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 (for example, Culloden
Battlefield can now be considered conventional).
The observations represent findings from
primary research including covert observation, and secondary research into marketing
lifecycles. Smith25 develops on the last of

Smith26 presents an ethnography of Americans in relation to the phenomenon of dark

tourism using a methodology focused on
discourse analysis. The author describes the
emergence of dark tourism over time using a
Foucauldian theoretical approach to discourse analysis 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.

PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACHES
Philosophical approaches to academic research in the area of dark tourism have been
commodiously postmodern or poststructuralist making prevalent reference to the recreation of authenticity and to the dilemmas
faced by attraction managers attempting to
bring history closer to the audience through
the use of imagery, multi-media and other
more engaging interpretation (see for example Hollinshead27 and Horne28 ). However,
positivist inquiry has also been undertaken
(Austin29 ) into the nature of visitation to
sensitive historical sites. Methodologies commonly adopted in research into dark tourism
have focused chiefly on qualitative inquiry
including cumulative case studies (Lennon
and Foley30 ), discourse analysis, semiotic and
hermeneutic analysis (Siegenthaler31 ) and
questionnaire design and mixed methods
(Austin32 ; Wight and Lennon33 ). The following paragraphs explore these philosophical and methodological approaches in more
detail with reference to interpretation and
contemporary discourse in dark tourism.

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Philosophical and methodological praxes in dark tourism

NOTES ON POSTMODERNISM
Postmodernism as a social phenomenon is
often viewed as a practical manifestation of
the academic theory of poststructuralism
(arising more from the cultural sphere).
Popular theorists (for example Foucault,
Lyotard and Baudrillard) have established
that postmodern thinking rejects grand narratives such as Marxism and feminism and is
as eclectic in its sources as it is syncretic in its
expressions (Kumar34 ). Postmodern philosophy considers that there is a random, directionless flux across all sectors of society
where boundaries are dissolved and a postmodern condition of fragmentation is emerging. It is, therefore, problematic to provide
a universally-accepted definition of the theory (while insuring against postmodern criticism and contradiction). However, an
appropriate definition for this article may be
that found in Hewitt and Osbourne35 describing the postmodern society as:

. . .One in which the image-realityrepresentation problematic is no longer in

operation, as we know reality is now
hyper-real. . .. Image and reality are somehow as one. . .. A one dimensional universe which is image saturated and
simultaneously freefloating and authentically unreal.
Grassie36 suggests that postmodernism and
deconstruction are often misunderstood by
their detractors and overstated by their proponents. This dichotomy is inherent in what
is described as an inaccessible philosophical
language tempered with confusion over
what postmodernism does and does not represent. The term postmodern has been
labeled a pejorative in the English language
(Protevi37 ), implying that a liberalist cadre of
privileged intellectuals have overturned capitalism and its views and announced the
revolutionary postmodern age (which is inaccessible to the less intellectually privileged). In this way these intellectuals may
simply be mirroring the endless repetition of
the fashion and culture industry, thereby
contradicting their own philosophical viewpoints (Protevi38 ). Indeed, it has been suggested (Wodward39 ) that postmodernism is

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an entirely nihilistic philosophy centered

around the repudiation of value and meaning.

DARK TOURISM AND

POSTMODERNISM
The definition of what is legitimately referred to as tourism activity has widened to
include almost every dimension of human
culture (Sutton and House40 ). These expanding horizons of cultural pluralism can be
considered as characteristic of the postmodern landscape. Postmodernist form (in
culture, literature, film and visual art) encompasses pluralism, the crossing of boundaries, themes and genres (Berger41 ) and the
combining of elements from popular culture
with modern forms. Hollinshead42 considers
Donald Hornes attempt to show how tourism (in a wider context) matters in contemporary society:

As an important performative broadcasting

medium to advance logics of production
where the invented culture can be seen
to be real through manipulation of the
micro-management of presented detail.
It is the political and social context of the
representation of holocaust camps and other
dark attractions that has arisen as a persistent
concern in academic literature (Smith43 ;
Lennon and Foley44 ; Seaton45 inter alia).
Hollinshead46 argues that tourism is a means
of production where the themes and sites
viewed are cleverly constructed narratives of
past events which can manipulate tourists to
become involved in configurations of political power. Such a manipulation is commented on in Dobbs (1999 cited in Strange and
Kempa47 ) with reference to visitation to
defunct penal institutions such as Alcatraz.
He submits (from the point of view of the
tourist) that:
Once we can imagine this deprivation
(incarceration), we learn to cherish freedom.
Tunbridge and Ashworth48 pioneered this
argument in the context of the management

Wight

and manipulation of holocaust sites as tourist

attractions in observing:
. . .the different forms of tourism development that have taken place at the different
concentration camps. . .and how this is in
a large part due to the various actions of
the various political masters in the period
since 1945.
The consequences of manipulating interpretation (based on political and social agendas)
in order to provide a visitor experience at
dark sites can belie the actual events that
took place there. For example, Lennon and
Foley49 comment on the misquoting of statistics on signage (now removed) at Auschwitz:
. . .the famously incorrect inscription in
twenty different languages on the black
sarcophagus at the end of the railway line
in Birkenau noted that four million people suffered and died here at the hands of
the Nazi murderers between the years
1940 and 1945.
Such criticisms assume that the imparting
of authentic information is critical to the
successful functionality of dark sites. Yet
proponents of postmodern thought may
counter-argue that accuracy (in this context)
is unimportant since interpretation, including signage seeks only to defend historical
truth in historical contexts. Issues of accuracy
may be purely peripheral to underlying
wider political and social priorities in schools
of postmodern thought (Hollinshead50 ) and
may be inconsequential. Langer51 calls for
clarification of responsibilities in memorializing holocaust attractions in asking:
To whom shall we entrust the custody of
the public memory of the Holocaust? To
the historian? To the survivor? To the
critic? To the poet, novelist, dramatist? All
of them recreate the details and images of
the event through written texts, and in so
doing remind us that we are dealing with
the represented rather than unmediated
reality.

CONTROVERSY SURROUNDING
INTERPRETATION
The memorial operation has been described
in the dark tourism context as self-contained,
and detached from our daily lives
(Young52 ). The author suggests that the illusion of our memories will always be there to
remind us and that we take leave of these
memories and return only at our convenience so that the memorial does our memory
work for us. Such agendas have been the
subject of academic debate surrounding the
representation of culture (or ideologicallyconstructed culture) at dark tourist attractions.
For example, Lennon and Foley53 comment on the highly-emotional contagion
effect that the Auschwitz visitor experience
has on the visiting public. The authors do
not seek to enfeeble the important and iconic status of the camp. They simply point
out that much of the tour taken by the
visiting public has been constructed to maximize audience engagement. For example,
the famous gate with signage above reading
Arbeit Macht Frei (Work will set you free)
has been imported from its original position
to a location near the end of the tour to
create a high (or perhaps low) point and a
controversial conclusion to the experience.
Other artefacts and structures have been imported from various peripheral sections of
the camp and set out in such a way as to
create a chronologically correct tour
amounting to a slow crescendo of increasingly stark interpretation from start to finish.
Indeed, the authors note that the main gate
into the camp is in fact some five kilometres
into the site of the original camp (as it existed
prior to emerging as a tourist attraction).
Interpretation in the heritage context has
been defined as:

A set of communication techniques of

varying degrees of effectiveness in varying
situations which can be used to get particular messages across to particular groups
of people. Interpretation becomes an adjunct to the communications industry.
(Uzzel54 )
Horne (1984, cited in Hollinshead55 ) devel-

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Philosophical and methodological praxes in dark tourism

ops on the argument of the use of interpretation at tourism attractions and destinations as
broadcasting media to influence visitor understanding and perceptions:
When peoples, nations and even whole
continents are made real or authenticated
in or by tourism they constitute ideologically constructed places and iconologically
appropriate spaces; imagination and reimagination in the business of tourism and
representation and evocation in public
culture are so frequently coterminous
agendas.
It is the manipulation of interpretation and
consequent visitor reactions through the enforcing of various political and social agendas
inherent in interpretive techniques that concern realist and Marxist authors such as
Horne (1984, cited in Hollinshead56 ) who
states:
Such rapid and repeated projections of the
authenticities of the public culture of peoples, of places and of pasts have an almost
untraced potential in the contemporary
age to bedazzle and bewitch the modern
pilgrims of tourism.
Horne57 argues that projected authenticity
can make all kinds of visitable objects dangerously transcendent and even silly, deadening or deprived. The author further
opines that the seeing of people and places
can prodigiously be used to arouse sincere
and genuine curiosity about the world, or it
can spread its own wanton and material
sickness. The argument is abrasive and acute
yet other authors have echoed these concerns more superficially on matters of
authenticity, veracity and interpretation in
the dark tourism context.
For example, Whitmarsh58 takes the argument into the context of British war museums questioning the proclivity of these
museums to present technological marvels,
such as tanks and aeroplanes while too often
eschewing the human costs of war. War
museums, according to the author, have
traditionally exhibited technology not only
because it confers major military advantage
and social progress, but also because it repre-

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sents a safe, sanitized version of war and is

easy to digest for visitors. Technological
parameters may be more easily managed and
presented since they can be precisely measured and are seldom the subject of moral
debate. The author points out that military
uniforms are also predominantly on display
in order to further represent the legerdemain
of warfare in museums. Uzzell59 records his
astonishment at ubiquitous exhibits of uniforms in war museums stating that it is:
. . .as if the most remarkable thing about so
many thousands, if not millions of people
killed in battle is the clothes in which they
died.
To develop on dilemmas over interpretation
and authenticity, some authors have explored areas of discourse surrounding the
commemoration of war and tragedy. For
example, Siegenthaler60 utilizes a qualitative
research methodology, specifically documentary and textual analysis, to analyse the
representation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
Japanese guide books. The author pithily
contends that Hiroshima and Nagasaki neatly
fit in with the evolving paradigm of other
dark attractions. His observations of images
and texts holistically combine to form
grounded theory, referred to in the concluding stage of the article as sight sacralization
(the sights, he postulated, are advertised to
tourists as sacred places, not victimized
places). The physical bombings are seldom
referred to in the guide books (as he expected might have been the case) and are
often presented as events outside of time or
historical circumstance. Interestingly, the
author postulates (through critical discourse
analysis) that the guide books respond to
attitudes surrounding the sites that they
cover. If juxtaposed with research into western dark tourism sites one difference may be
that in the west, interpretation manipulates
visitor reactions (reactive interpretation),
whereas in Japan (specifically in terms of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki) reactions to tragedy inherent in discourse in various genres
dictate subsequent representations (proactive
interpretation, through guide books in this
instance).

Wight

Jenkins61 develops on the argument, evidencing the power that particular images
have on the behaviour of tourists:
Texts (paintings, photographs, landscapes
and words) are arranged into discourses
or frameworks that embrace particular
combinations of narratives, concepts and
ideologies that vary between cultures,
classes and races.
However, the author criticizes positivist approaches to image interpretation in tourism
which have focused on the link between the
publicly-projected place images and the visitation of specific sites. The processes involved in influencing tourists through
imagery, according to the author, are not
well understood and must be problematized
through qualitative inquiry:
The importance of the visual image in
determining or shaping images and visitation is probably as great as it is unstudied.
(Butler, 1990 cited in Jenkins62 )
Alsford and Parry63 (p. 9) suggest so-called
live interpretation (incorporating multimedia, re-enactments and interactivity at
attractions) is effective where the aim is to
represent and engage audiences in controversial or sensitive issues including social
conflict. The authors argue that live interpretation can engage intellectual participation of visitors:
. . .by encouraging them to register their
own judgements on the issues. Slavery,
funerals, crime, temperance and religious
revivals are among the value-ridden subjects which have been tackled.
Interactive exhibits, according to Fernandez
and Benlloch64 are an example of modern
interpretative communications media employed by some museums in order to present
information in such a way as to hold the
attention of the visitor. It is argued that
interactive techniques used in museums are a
valuable learning resource for visitors and, in
particular, school and colleges. The authors
stress the importance of quantitative and
qualitative research into visitor behaviour.
For example it is suggested that:

Quantitative studies collect such data as

length of visit, visitors approach to reading text and duration of interaction with
the exhibit. . .. Of particular interest to
museologists is information relating to the
visitors grasp of the concepts that the
various exhibits are intended to convey
(Fernandez and Benlloch65 )
Some contrariant debate is evident in literature focusing on postmodern exhibitory
techniques in the context of war-related
exhibits. Perkins66 questions the authenticity
of artefacts when they are complemented
with (or replaced by) informational displays
and interactivity. The author comments on
the removal of artefacts by the National Air
and Space Museum in its World War I
aviation gallery. It is inferred that historians
criticize the live interpretation approach for
trivializing the role of aviation during the
First World War. The same museum, according to the author, considered a provocative approach to the interpretation of World
War II:
The Enola Gay would be the centrepiece
of the exhibition. Around it, the exhibit
would consider a series of historical controversies. Was a warning or demonstration of the bomb possible? Was the
decision to drop the bomb justified? Extensive photographs, artefacts, and discussions relating to the bombings effects on
the Japanese victims would intensify the
interpretation. (Perkins67 )
Such exhibitory techniques have been the
cynosure of academic criticism for lacking
balance and historical context and for simply
playing on emotions (Uzzell68 ; Fernandez
and Benlloch69 ). Walsh70 questions the dependability of authentic, live interpretation,
noting of the Trench Experience in the
Imperial War Museum, London that:
The installation invites the public to relive
a moment of history. . .. Once inside each
visitor feels the full impact of the battlefield with gun flashes, smoke, sound reenactment and authentic smells. (Walsh71 )
Walsh claims that the emphasis on dark

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Philosophical and methodological praxes in dark tourism

subject matter in exhibitions lies on the

authenticity of form, rather than that of
experience. If interpretation of this kind is
used (for example, multi-media and interactivity including authentic sights and smells)
this will lead, according to Walsh, to a postmodernistic sentencing to life in fantasy
space which eschews historical value and
metanarrative.
METHODOLOGICAL PRAXIS
Nuryanti72 suggests that the 20th century is
characterized by a new awareness that seeks
to find novel ways to communicate with the
past and that this is made palpable in tourism
through the emergence of specialized tastes
and a frantic search for authenticity, identity
and encounters that differ from so-called
mass tourism. Dark tourism is considered
one such esoteric encounter that is anticipated and experienced in different ways, and
interpreted and represented through an ever
evolving nouvelle vague of live interpretation, multimedia and projected authenticity
involving the local, the global, the unique
and the universal:

As in postmodern architecture, travel and

travellers display ornamentation and style
aestheticisation and symbols, all of which
are essential to confirming the tourists
search for new meaning and dignity.
(Nuryanti73 )
Seaton and Lennon74 develop on this aspect
of 20th century novelty in the shape of dark
tourism by suggesting the media (in the UK
and in America) have:
Periodically constructed a meta-narrative
of moral panic around it (dark tourism)
through sensational exposes of dubiously
verified stories.
Such stories include the alleged exploitation
of controversial sites of crime and murder
through tourism including allegations of tour
companies emerging in controversial dark
hot spots such as Dunblane and Soham.
The authors point out that these reports are
seldom followed up and real dark tours that
exist, such as Kray Twins Gangland Tours

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are overlooked completely as they may not

be considered commodious (thus newsworthy in some press circles) to moral panic
and controversy. The authors argue that the
UK media generate a contrived version of
dark tourism for the public by creating a
discursive formation of panic around 20th
century sites associated with death and
tragedy.
The methodological praxis pursued in
academic inquiry into dark tourism has been
predominantly qualitative given that epistemic reflexivity evident in the work of
existing researchers commonly considers sociological issues that are traditionally the
focus of qualitative research. These include
anthropology, psychology and consumer behaviour and often pluralist or postmodern
philosophical stances. Quantitative research,
therefore, remains largely unchallenged and
notional in the archetype of the subject and
the benefits of quantitative enquiry are seldom acknowledged or made clear. As the
academic paradigm evolves, however, quantitative research is likely to emerge as a useful
research tool given the growing interest in
the numbers and types of visitors to sites and
the fact that dark tourism certainly fits in
with the wider definition of tourism activity.
It is therefore important to remain cognisant
of the intrinsic placing of dark tourism within wider tourism issues such as employment
generation, marketing lifecycles and measurements of visitor types (all potential focal
points of positivist inquiry). The wealth of
qualitative research that exists may well pave
the way for consequent quantitative enquiry
as Brannen75 confirms:
Where qualitative methods play a subsidiary role in a project they are likely to have
particular kinds of functions. First, they
may act as a source of hunches or hypotheses which quantitative work may then go
on to test.
Some evidence of the usefulness of quantitative study in dark tourism is notable in
Austins examination of site visitor data. Data
from questionnaires was analysed in this
study using a data indexing, searching and
theorizing technique developed by Richards

Wight

and Richards.76 Indeed, this work confirms

the advantage of mixed-method research,
incorporating questionnaires, observations
and interviews in an attempt to better understand visitor motivation in the context of
visitation to dark sites. Given the previously
discussed context of dark tourism as it matters in the wider tourism debate, the financial benefits of dark tourism should be of
some concern to academics and practitioners,
particularly marketers of the dark product. A
disproportional amount of research has gone
into examining motivation and interpretation while there remains a paucity of research into the economic impact of dark sites
on their host localities. As such, research into
dark tourism could extend to include quantitative inquiry into such an intrinsic facet of
this aspect of tourism.
CONCLUSION
An academic framework for what can be
considered dark tourism has been established
largely through qualitative methodological
enquiry and through philosophical inclinations towards postmodern, (and more superficially) feminist and Marxist schools of
thought. Pioneering research into this subject has introduced a number of sub-debates
including questions over what is to count as
dark tourism both chronologically and functionally. Contemporary issues in the domain
include visitor motivation and interpretation
at dark sites. These sites can be described as
cultural landscapes, the management of
which defines the context in which they are
interpreted. Discourses and discursive formations can either influence or be influenced
by perceptions of dark sites through the
evolution of imagery, projected authenticity
and commentary.
Contemporary and controversial exhibitory techniques used at dark sites are the
subject of debate with some traditionalists
being motivated to defend the historical context of dark tourist attractions arguing that
the informational overload of interpretation
belies the historical importance and truth
about memory. Proponents of postmodernism, conversely, defend the image-saturated,

interactive tourist experience and accentuate

the importance of the tourist search for
entertainment, authenticity and new meaning. The issue of memorial, and specifically,
to whom we entrust memory, is at the centre
of debate surrounding veracity and appropriate representation of dark sites. Memory, it
has been argued, can be subverted if interpretation is based to any extent upon specific
cultural, political and social agendas that
often lie peripheral to the memorializing of
death and tragedy.
The academic paradigm is evolving and is
so far based largely on qualitative enquiry
with prevailing methodologies embracing
discourse analysis including semiotics, participant observation and case studies. A conceptual approach to dark tourism is therefore
dominant and is focused on the deconstruction of meta-narrative surrounding historical
context, meaning, representation and interpretation. It is likely, however, that future
research will overlap into quantitative research, including positivist enquiry, since the
subject remains closely entwined in pragmatic academic tourism interests such as the
analyses of tourist typologies, numbers of
visitors and the economic impacts of such
sites.

REFERENCES
(1) Lennon, J. J. and Foley, M. (2000) Dark
Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster.
London and New York: Continuum.
(2) Seaton, A. V. (1996) Guided by the Dark:
From Thanatopsis to Thanatourism,
International Journal of Heritage Studies 2(4):
23444.
(3) Beech, J. (2000) The Enigma of Holocaust
Sites as Tourist Attractions: The Case of
Buchenwald, Managing Leisure 5(1): 2941.
(4) Strange, C. and Kempa, M. (2003) Shades
of Dark Tourism: Alcatraz and Robben
Island, Annals of Tourism Research 30(2):
386405.
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