Alterizntives 25 C?

OOO), 91-116

Consuming Danger:
Reimagining the War/Tourism Divide

Debbie Lisle*

The most uncanny moment in the recent film Saving Private Ryan
is not in the much-talked-about battle scenes, nor is it in the moral
disagreements between the soldiers sent to rescue Ryan. Rather, it
is a quiet moment amid the violence, a solitary action that is never
explained or referred to. Toward the end of the chaotic D-Day
landing, Sergeant Horvath (played by Tom Sizemore) does some-
thing unusual as his fellow soldiers struggle to cope with the sur-
rounding carnage. He opens his rucksack, takes out a small metal
container labeled “France,” and fills it with the soil beneath his
feet. He then places it back in his rucksack beside identical con-
tainers labeled “Italy” and “Africa.” There is an almost self-con-
scious element in his actions-his eyes dart, he is hunched over-
as if he doesn’t want the other soldiers to share iil‘ this private act
of collection, What could this curious gathering and labeling of
dirt in a war zone possibly mean? Surely a relationship between
blood and soil is suggested, not so much in terms of national her-
itage, but rather in terms of shedding blood for the acquisition of
strategic territory. Are the other containers in Sergeant Horvath’s
rucksack empty or full? What will he do with these souvenirs if and
when he returns home to the United States? Is h e there to win the
war for freedom or to travel overseas and experience foreign cul-
tures? The last statement seems a ludicrous and even offensive sug-
gestion, but it is one this article aims to address.
War and tourism are strange bedfellows. It is not easy to see
how violence and human atrocity are connected to the leisure
practices of foreign holidays. *Indeed,,itwould be more appropriate
to suggest that,the,two events are rigorously.separated, that mod-
ern tourism explicitly avoids areas of violence in .order to provide
the safest possible vacation spots for tourists. One can imagine a

‘gSchoolof Politics, 19-21 University Square, Queens University of’Belfast, Belfast

BT7 IPA, Northern Ireland, d.lisIe@qub.ac.uk.

91
peaceful vacation in Hawaii, but Sierra Leone? or Kosovo? While
contemporary warfare does not enter the spatial remit of modern
tourism, the commemoration of historical battles in the form of
war memorials, military museums, and’battle reenactments makes
up a large part of contemporary tourist practice. Therefore, the
separation of war and tourism can be understood in the following
way: if war is located “elsewhere,” tourism can ensure the safety of
its consumers, and if war happened “back then,” tourism emerges
as the principal mechanism by which subjects can access and com-
memorate already resolved conflicts.
This article argues that the separation of war and tourism is re-
peatedly held in place by an overarching discourse of global secu-
rity that allows subjects to locate and understand prevailing images
of safety and danger. More specifically, it argues that the safety/
danger opposition at the heart of global security shapes the prac-
tices of modern tourism. Continually locating places where the
world is under threat-from states, areas, and regions to cities and
neighborhoods-produces a powerful discursive map that not only
instructs global powers to intervene in these “hot spots,” it also in-
structs tourists to choose holiday destinations that meet their secu-
rity requirements. That cartography has an important history: only
“safe” places that have achieved a certain level of “peace and sta-
bility” can guarantee the continuation of modern tourism in an en-
vironment unimpeded by the disruption of war. But achieving that
kind of lasting liberal peace takes time. While safe places are cer-
tainly safe now, it is only because they have already gone through
the’necessary historical stages of struggle and war-events that
tourists are now able to commemorate.
When the war/tourism relationship is understood through a
prevailing discourse of global security, these two events are sepa-
rated in both space and time. In order to rework that understand-
ing of global security, this article argues that far from achieving a
separation, the safety/danger opposition of global security actually
connects war and tourism in powerful ways. Think of how tourists
make decisions about where to go on holiday-one goes to Paris,
not Pristina. In this way, the same discourse of global security that
shapes foreign policy also governs the more mundane activities of
tourists. But the reverse is also the case: because tourist revenues
are crucial to national economies, and political7instability scares off
tourists, governments are keen to promote the safety of their coun-
try in order to secure the flow of tourist dollars.
To the extent that nations promote themselves as secure spaces
in order to lure the profitable tourist industry, it can be said that
tourism shapes the discourse of global security. The mutual regu-
lations between war and tourism are politically interesting because
 Debbie Lisle 93

they produce the effect of a static boundary. In other,words, the

forces separating war and tourism are solidified to the extent that
they successfully perform the illusion of safety here and now, and
danger there and then. To reveal’the bouydary between war and
tourism as a performance (albeit a powerful one) is to illustrate
how these discrete events actually collapse into one another. By po-
sitioning the banal workings of tourism alongside the serious activ-
ities of warfare, the safety/danger opposition at the 1ieart.of global
security is exposed to its own excesses and impurities. For,example,
tourists are now marching on the war zones of Sarajevo and Ku-
wait, and cultural, sites like Luxor have recentlybecome the explicit
targets of terrorism’s war against tourism.
1 This article ‘arguesthat the connections betweeh war’aiid toue-
ism disrupt and resist the prevailing images of safety and danger
th’at attempt to hold them apart. Mbre. importantly, reimagining
the war/tourism divide prevents the hegemo’nic’discoui-se of.global
security from completing itself, stabilizing its boundaries, and se-
curing a totalized presence..

Initial Attachments
-?,
WUYCauses Tourisin, Tourism Catis& Peace
While an antithetical ‘relationship between war and tourisin Seems
obvious today, it is important to recall that these ‘two phenomena
were actually forged together in the aftermath ofworld War ‘11.
“Postwar” tourism i’efers to :the leisure practices that ‘emerged 011
an unprecedented scale after 1945. To explain the rapid change
and expansion of global mobility, World War H’is often seen as the
primary causal agent in the creation of k o d e r n mass tourisin. ‘As
Valene Smith explains, “the technological innovations ’ which
helped to win that war also spawned peace-time airborne interna-
tional tourism and the awareness that freedom to-travel is.a human
right. ”l Built into the causal relationship. between war and tourism
is an enduring normative impulse that resonates in the’prevailing.
discourse of global security. In reaction to the horrors of Woi-Id
War I1 (especially the nuclear bombs), mass tourism was promoted
as the means to greater global understanding, the reduction of
conflict, and the crea~on.ofa lasting,world
. _. I.peace. By visiting other
places and cultures, people could ,“see for ‘themselves” that what
unites us as human beings is mucli, stronger,than,.what divides us.
This belief emerges most explicitly when tourism, “the world’s new
peace industry,” promotes ‘the “global village” as the’u1timate:des:
tination for l’iberal-minded tourists: , . ,.
, .. ’
94 Coilsitmirig Danger

Through tourism we can come rather to an appreciation of the

rich human, cultural, and ecological diversity that our world mo-
saic offers. . . . The collective outcomes of these travel and
tourism experiences help all humankind to appreciate the full
meaning of the “Global Village” and the bonds that people
everywhere have with one another.*

The argument here is that because tourism encourages a re-

spect for diversity, it can protect the entire “world mosaic” from the
horrors of war. The “peacemaking” role of tourism connects di-
rectly to the “civilizational” argument entailed in the discourse of
global security. World peace comes about when tourists visit and
learn about different ways of life, when they see more of the “world
mosaic” they belong to. But the kind of “global understandings”
promoted within this vision of tourism can emerge only when the
prerequisite qualities of liberalism, tolerance, and equality are in
place. In short, making the world safe for democracy also means
making it safe for tourism. Tourism becomes a positive force for
democratic change because along with the economic benefits of
hard currency, tourism also introduces liberalism, tolerance, and
equality: it is a peaceful way to universalize the “good” and “just”
life that democracy provides for those within the global village.3
Although the specific technologies of World War I1 made the
emergence of global tourism possible, war in general became the
event that global tourism worked hardest to oppose. While the very
definitions of tourism are historically attached to World War I1 (e.g.,
prewar or postwar tourism), the moral purpose behind global
tourism lies in its attempt to create global peace through an under-
standing of diversity.,However, understanding the relationship be-
tween war and tourism in causal terms-war causes tourism, tourism
causes peace-prepares the ground for the modern separation of
these two phenomena. Very simply, war and tourism must be separate
phenomena in order for one to cause the other. To the extent that
this division is maintained, the prevailing discourse of global security
remains intact. In tracing how the separation between war and
tourism is produced and repeated, it is possible to reimagine the lib-
eral underpinnings of the discourse of global security.

Separation and Sanitation

Regiilnting the Wnrflourism Divide

Given the importance of World War I1 in the birth of modern
tourism, it is curious ,that war is subsequently distanced from tourist
 Debbie Lisle 95

practice. From the causal attachment comes a simple?equation: be-

cause modern tourism prospers only where danger is absent, and
war is the apotheosis of violence and danger, tourist sites can never
be copresent with immediate war and danger. This equation ac-
cords with a discourse of global security that protects those parts of
the globe where liberal democracy prospers. For modern tourism to
operate freely in those places, war must be banished elsewhere in
space (to “hot spots” of the globe) and locked away in the annals of
history (to be recounted as heroic battle victories). The discourse of
global security ensures that war and tourism are distanced from one
another both spatially and temporally, and this article reveals pow-
’
erful practices of sanitation at work in that separation.
The regulation of safety and danger in the ,war/tourism relation-
ship makes sense when it is organized around what John Urry has
called the modern tourist gaze.4 In Urry’s formulation, tourism in-
volves a movement away from the everyday places of work and home
and an engagement with a fixed system of signs and markers that are
already known to be of cultural and historical significance. These
signs are valued by the tourist primarily because they are different
from home. There€ore, markers located along an already inscribed
tourist route (e.g., tlie Great Wall of China, the Grand Canyon, Nia-
gara Falls) are understood primarily within a discourse of the extraor-
dinary that shapes the way places are desired and consumed. How
ever, while providing a sequence of “extraordinary” sites for the
visitor, the tourist gaze miist also guarantee the security of its subjects
within that circuit. Therefore, to become an important marker
withinmodern tourism, a site must be both special and safe. Tourists
need something extraordinary to see (hence. the promotion of di-
versity and the location of otherness), but they also need a sense of
security as they experience foreign lands. Therefore, modern
tourism always negotiates between two competing and often contra-
dictory discourses: the extraordimry (tourism must engage with dif-
ference) and security (tourism must guarantee mfety during that en-
gagement). The installation of the safety/danger binary here can be
understood in the following way: when war appears on the horizon
of.the tourist gaze, the discourse of the extraordinary gives way to
the discourse of security. No matter how exotic or different a place
is, if the safety of the tourist cannot be ensured, then that place will
be excised from the circuit of the tourist gaze. And it S i n tlie ex-
pulsion of danger that the process of sanitation begins:’ ’

, ‘

Dividing Territory: Snfe Zones and War Z o h s

In the first instance, tlie war/tourism opposition is guaranteed ge-
ographically: tourists want to be as far away from physical danger as
96 Consuming Danger

possible. Therefore, a geographical imagination full of all the dif-

ferent ‘‘elsewheres”one could visit is further divided into ‘‘zones of
safety” where the modern tourist gaze operates freely, and “off-
limits” areas where the tourist gaze refuses to enter. Newspaper
travel sections warn, “There is a world of adventure out there, but
we must learn to accept that some of it may be off-limits, and
“There are some places where even the most intrepid travelers fear
to tread.”5 Many of these “off-limits”areas are so named because of
their proximity to a war zone. For example, most of the Middle
East, the Balkans, and sub-Saharan Africa are “too dangerous” for
most tourists who followed the wars in the Gulf, Bosnia, Rwanda,
and Somalia on their television screens.6 By locating and avoiding
dangerous places on the globe, the tourist gaze is redirected to
“safety zones” that are guaranteed to be both special and secure.
Each time the safety/danger opposition is invoked to direct and
redirect tourist destinations, the spatial separation of war and
tourism is accomplished.
To address the geographical imagination at work here it is nec-
essary to unpack the argument that tourism is an engine for peace.
Because tourism exemplifies the “enlightened” practice of appre-
ciating and tolerating difference, it further divides safe places into
“zones of enlightenment” and “zones of diversity,” both of which
are placed. in opposition to danger. Very simply, there are certain
places that produce tourists and there are certain places that are
produced for tourists to consume-and both must be protected
from violent places that are off-limits to tourism altogether.
I However, as tourism adopts the spatial coding of global secu-
rity, it automatically inherits the moral arguments underscoring lib-
eral democracy and Western civilization. For example, journalist
and travel writer Robert Kaplan is obsessed with predicting “The
Coming Anarchy”-when those dangerous “off-limits”places even-
tually spill over and threaten our sanctified Western homes. The
“anarchy” is identified in the ‘6devastatedparts of the world,” “cul-
tural disasters-like those in Bosnia, Chechnya, and Rwanda
today,” “the unfashionable regions of the third world,” and “the
abyss on which so much of the world now teeters.”’ A more famil-
iar positioning of danger is represented by the tourist gaze that
frames Francis Fukuyama’s lament at the passing of history. Those
of us who have reached the end of history (and thus the end of
ideological struggle) have acquired the right to gaze upon (1)
those unfortunate souls still “mired” in an endless repetition of eth-
nic, religious, and civilizational conflict, and (2) “our” own history
of struggle-enlightened folk are tourists locked in the “perpetual
caretaking of,the museum of human history.”BThe territorialization
 Debbie lisle 97

evident in Kaplan and Fukuyama shapes the tourist gaze: tourists do

not go to the “cultural .disasters”Kaplan describes, because the only
time the tourist can safely encounter danger is in museum displays.

Telling the History of Wnr: The Phctice of Coinineinorntioq

As Fukuyama’s lament illustrates, there is a n important historical
structure built into the cartography of safety and danger. While the
tourist gaze locates. current danger in .places that are, far away,
tourists are keen to experience the epents of war to the extent that
they occurred “farther back” in history. In other words, tourists will
visit what used to be a war zone:because their safety ‘is temporally se-
cured-the danger of war remains in the past. . ‘( I

This temporality workvin tandem with the territorialization of

safety/danger by producing important sites of commemoration so
that ,tourists can easily access war at a ,historical distance. Although
the names of famous battles invoke. images -of violence-the
beaches of Normandy, Guadalcanal, .Pearl Harbor, Viiny Ridge,
Passchendaele, the Somme-tourists are safe in their present en-
counters because many months and years separate them from the
bloodshed they are there to revere.9 The metaphors ,abound here:
instead of battalions of soldiers colonizing‘a strategic site, ,“hordes
of tourists” commemorate (by viewing) and consume (by purclias-
ing souvenirs) territory that once hosted an important national/
historical battle. As Smith’suggests, t h e “memorabilia of warfare”
such as battlefields, war memorials, military graveyards, battle reen-
actments, and monuments, “probably constitute the. largest single
category of tourist attractions in the world.”l0And as long as those
wars ‘are safely tucked away in the annals of history, tourists ar.e un-
touched by its danger and violence-their security enables them to
gaze contentedly upon what was once a site of carnage. . ,

As the tourist gaze is directed back in history to sites, of war

that are temporally distant; a chronological layer is added to the
territorial displacement of danger. As artists and architects .Eliza-
beth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio remark:
,- , / .
A location where a soldier died for a cause will undohtedly be
visite-d by others. There are few :battle sites ‘that remain,1111-
marked, unmonumented, or free from evaluation in guidebooks... I

AS war ensures tourism,:it.also needs tourism’s continuous coin-

memoration, and commemoration needs spatial fixity.11 .. , . ,

.
’* > . # i , , ,. ,
,~
I . , .,~,

As Diller and Scofidio suggest, past wars guarantee future tour-

ism. But the relationship works the other way as well: tourism is the
1 . i ,; , * I ,,
98 Conslitiring Dnnger

primary mechanism by which subjects gain access to wars of the

past. In other words, a nation’s military history is continually re-
peated by tourist practices of commemoration. As tourists move
through already organized historical battle sites, they are encour-
aged to remember war in particular ways. Tourism gathers and
orders disparate events (such as conflicts and wars) into a single,
homogeneous, national narrative that can be easily accessed by
tourists-both citizens and foreigners. The national stories acti-
vated in tourist sites achieve currency through their continual rep-
etition over time and across generations. It is notjust returning sol-
diers that visit cemeteries, bunkers, and monuments-more often
than not, it is the generations that do not possess a. living memory
of the war that visit these sites.’*
To go back to Saving Private Ryan, it is precisely the search for
these generational connections that bookends the film: it is not
just an older Private Ryan that returns to Omaha Beach, but his
sons and daughters and grandchildren as well. This is how the
modern tourist gaze sanitizes history: it demands simple recon-
structions of military battles and attaches them to a bounded na-
tional narrative that is cross-generational in its appeal.
Within this sanitized tourist gaze, national heritage can never
be a complex matter: there are clear winners and losers who par-
ticipate in important events that are repeated in each structured
commemoration. But access to those events is highly clisciplined-
tourists are encouraged to “follow”the narrative of war being pre-
sented (the closer the better) and discouraged from asking ques-
tions about what that narrative excludes or silences in the name of
the consumptive tourist gaze, By interpreting acts of war within al-
ready constructed national narratives, tourists are persuaded to for-
get the violence of the event they are witnessing. The modern
tourist gaze makes it very difficult to hear those “other”stories of
warfare that do not run along national lines, stories that illustrate
the complexities of nation building, the contingencies and chaos
of battle, and the unrepresentable nature of violence and trauma.

Mitigating Dnnger Through Tourisin: The Sanitation of Conflict

The job of tourist professionals is to make military history “come
alive” for consumers who may or may not have any personal con-
nection to the battle being represented. Tourism makes it easier
for visitors to understand “what exactly happened” during a partic-
ular battle, and helps them situate that narrative within already cir-
culating national mythologies.
But these practices of simplification must reconcile two com-
peting desires: the tourists’ wish to brush against the danger and
 Debbie Lisle 99

heroism of war, and their vacation requirements of comfort and

leisure. Tourists must be reassured: although they have come to see
places where carnage-took place, these sites are not only perfectly
safe but also complete with modern conveniences. Holt’s Tours, a
British company specializing in trips to historic battlefields, must
manage the competing desires for danger and leisure expressed by
their customers. For those who prefer to get their history from “ac-
tual encounters” rather than films, Holt’s Tours offered a 1998
summer holiday in the Bordeaux region entitled “Stop the Das
Reich Division” that traced the battle depicted at the end of Saving
Az’vate Ryan. As well as learning how the French Resistance tried.t.0
stop the Second SS Panzer Division, tourists were also able to ex-
perience the pleasures of summertime in France:

This tour takes us to the less travelled areas of Limousin . . . and

covers the momentous events of June, 1944. . . . We will visit this
still-destroyed small town, a memorial to the brutality suffered by
the French. But this varied tour is not all horrors. There are
good things in Me, too-spectacular countryside, beautiful
chateaux, a visit to Limoges (famous for its porcelain) and a no-
table claret vineyard, and the enjoyment of good food and
wine.13

Lest the tourists get too gloomy with the reminders of what war
is really like (this particular battle resulted in mass hangings, shoot-
ings, the deportation of citizens, and the sacking of the village),
they must also be promised the consumptive perks of modern
tourism. In this way, the trauma of war is continually kept at a dis-
tance €rom the tourist through conveniently timed opportunities
for leisure and consumerism (touring a vineyard and purchasing
porcelain).
While both danger and leisure are given free rein in Limoges,
more recent conflicts illustrate how the onset of violence eclipses
the desire for the extraordinary and the provision of leisure. In
other words, the vanishing tourist gaze is one of the first signs of
geopolitical instability. For example, important tourist revenues
from the Dalmatian coast disappeared when war broke out in the
former Yugoslavia: understandably, tourists were more concerned
about their safety than they were about having a sunny holiday on
the Adriatic. But the process of sanitation became explicit only
after the conflicts were over and Croatia attempted to win back the
tourist gaze.
For cities like Dubrovnik that rely on tourism for economic sur-
vival, the effects of the war are still continuing-they must now
come up with the resources and marketing strategies to combat the
100 Coiisiriniiig Dariger

images of warfare that tourists still associate with Croatia and more
recently with neighboring Kosovo.14 In response, the Croatian
Tourist Board developed a campaign to promote a “peaceful” hol-
iday resort where tourists can access history, relax in nature, and
not worry about the political situation in the Balkans. The postcard
advertisement shown in Figure 1, published in early 1998, expresses
this strategy.ls Suggesting that the “architectural jewel” of ancient
Dubrovnik is “completely undisturbed” sanitizes what was recently a
strategic site in the Bosnian conflict. Advertisements such as these
encourage tourists to actively forget the massive shelling of
Dubrovnik that occurred during the winter of 1991-92.16
A much more repetitive version of sanitation is occurring in
Northern Ireland. One of the early strategies for luring the tourist
gaze to Belfast was to pretend “the troubles” in Northern Ireland
never occurred. The promotion of tourism therefore focused on
the rural idyll of the Irish countryside, the friendly, “muddled” and
“talkative”qualities of the Irish people, and the serenity of an “un-
sophisticated” but “magic” landscape.17 Images of leisure and
recreation in a rural setting emerge as antidotes to media images
and news reports of a wartorn Belfast. Aimed especially at British
tourists, this “rural” image of Northern Ireland was promoted as a
perfect weekend getaway (see Figure 2).18
However, when those peaceful images of leisure still failed to
attract visitors, the Northern Ireland Tourist Board developed an-
other strategy. While tacitly recognizing “the troubles,” the NITB
sought to reassure tourists that Northern Ireland is “not as bad as
people think.” Guidebooks and promotions suggested that the
public’s violent images were the result of an overzealous media:
‘‘Most people, dependent on the media for their information, see
Northern Ireland as a community in turmoil-wracked by violence,
bitterly divided, socially regressive. That perception is wrong.”lg To
combat this image, two different explanations were offered: Belfast
is not as dangerous as other tourist destinations (especially US
cities), and “the troubles” are contained in very specific areas
(Western Belfast,, Londonderry, the Falls Road, and the Shankill
Road), where tourists do not go.20Although the NITB cannot con-
trol media images of Northern Ireland, the suggestion here is that
the violence in Northern Ireland is manageable, and thus safe for
tourists.
The spatiotemporal distance between war and tourism is clear
in these three examples: the tourist gaze requires a widely accepted
cessation to military activity before the operations of tourism can
be introduced. In the case of Bordeaux, security is not an immedi-
ate issue as tourists move freely from vineyards to war memorials.
 FOR GENERAL ENQUIRIES CALL 0181 563 3792 OR CONTtICT CROATIANNATIONAL TOURISMOFFICE
, THE LANCHESTERS, 162-164FVLHAMPALACE ROAD LONDON W6 9ER. FAX:0181 563 2616.
Figure 2
 Debbie Lisle 103

But in countries recently unsettled by conflict, the promotion of

tourism actively relies on practices of sanitation. Visual images of
common tourist sites such as beaches, famous historic buildings,
and leisure facilities are an attempt to erase the recent media im-
ages of war. Places like Dubrovnik and Belfast will be accepted back
into the tourist gaze only if tourists are encouraged to forget that
Dubrovnik was recently shelled and that Belfast has for years beell
plagued with sectarian violence. Lingering events like the Kosovo
intervention and the Omagh bombing work to contaminate these
attempts at sanitation. What is revealed in these interruptions are
the connections between war and tourism that sanitized tourist en-
counters attempt to silence. ’

The Excessive Gaze

Critiquing the Wnrflotirisnz Oppositioiz

To suggest that war and tourism are separate phenomena is to ig-
nore the changing and multiple practices of both activities. The “ac-
ceptable” understanding of the change in tourism is that it has ex-
panded into a global space. Although it is possible to say that
tourism touches every part of the globe in its production and coll-
sumption of place, it is not possible to argue that access to those
places is equally distributed. The “freedom of movement” argument,
while initially attractive, ignores the overwhelming inequalities that
are embedded in the workings of global tourism (e.g., ecological de-
struction, cultural commodification, the physical delerioration of
historical sites, child-sex tourism, the increasing power of multina-
tional corporations) .21
Likewise, even the most fleeting glance at post-1945 conflict
suggests that the practices of war have changed dramatically since
the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The protracted
years of the Cold War that saw repeated attempts to contain armed
conflict have given way to an arena in which violence does not, and
cannot, remain within an allotted sovereign space. New teclinolo-
gies of communication, transportation, surveillance, and’destruc-
tion make it difficult to define warfare, organize appropriate in-
terventions, and allocate responsibility for atrocities. To the extent
that war and tourism can be mapped neatly onto a global imagi-
nary of (1) safety/presence/home and (2) danger/absence/else-
where, these two phenomena remain not only separate but also im-
mutable. However, by taking contemporary transformations of war
and tourism into account, it is possible to argue that tourist sites
104 Coiisirriiiiig Dnriger

and war zones are, and have always been, connected in much more
complex ways than causality or separation.
AltlIough the tourist gaze is useful in positioning a hegemonic
circuit of “visitable” sites, it loses its currency when the discourses
of “the extraordinary” and “the secure” are disrupted. By reimag-
ining the tourist gaze through its failures and excesses, it is possi-
ble to problematize the safety/danger opposition it shares with the
discourse of global security. Rethinking compartmentalized “safe
zones” and “danger zones” requires a different understanding of
territory that takes into account the multiple orderings of space
and power. Likewise with the temporal displacement of danger:
sanitized histories work only when the dangers of yesterday’s bat-
tles are kept just there-yesterday.
But “history” has a funny way of repeating itself, of coming back
to haunt even the most sanitized places. When war refuses to stay put
in museum displays and monuments, when trauma erupts on an un-
predictable global stage, it can no longer be contained by a modern
tourist gaze that pursues the extraordinary to the extent that it is
safe. Urry’s formulation of the tourist gaze is limited because it ends
up instigating its own figuration of what tourism is, what tourists do,
and what the material effects of these practices are.“
In illustrating the exclusions and hierarchies of a thing called
“tourism,” Urry’s formulation misses the fact that the central ethos
of all travel is nzovenzent. That is to say, in mapping what the tourist
gaze is, where it occurs, and who performs it, Urry stabilizes events
and moments that refuse containment and resist static formula-
tions. Tourist practices are never as homogeneous as the tourist
gaze suggests: tourism comes in different forms, i t involves coin-
plex practices, it is highly mobile, and it creates multiple and un-
stable subject positions. Rethinking the tourist gaze suggests that
not all tourists view the world in the same way; indeed, some are
critical and even reflexive in the face of difference and otherness.
No matter how rigorous and profligate the disciplining mecha-
nisms of the.tourist gaze are (the.most obvious symbol of this reg-
ulation being the guidebook), tourists both fail and exceed the
instructions produced by the tourist gaze. It is easy to see how
tourism becomes a competitive event in terms of “been there, done
that”-the tourist who views the most sites in the least amount of
time wins. In this way, tourists are always bound to “fail” as they
struggle to fulfill the requirements of “total global vision = total
global knowledge”-an equation embedded in the tourist gaze.
Furthermore, Urry’s term gaze implies that visual consump tion
is sustained over a period of time. But as David Chaney suggests, it
 Debbie Lisle 105

is more appropriate’ to.,say’that toul;istsr,only glimpse produced

‘moments of other places, cultures, and histories.23 Much tourist
practice works against the disciplining force of the gaze: tourists
get bored, they misread signs, they trespass, they lose tlieir guide-
books, ‘and they experience jet’lag. Chaney:s refiguration of tour-
ism through’the “glimpse”illustTates the ephemerality of sites, the
unfinished,and substitutable nature of desired objects;’an’d’tlie,~ - e -
flexive engagements that tourists are capable of. Unfashionable as
it m,aybe, I want to push that “failure” and argue’that totlrists are
never completely governed: they produce nndresist the divisions of
safety and danger that the tourist gaze imposes.,
Along with “failing” to discipline tourists,‘ the tourist’gaze also
exceeds its own configuration. Urry’s formulation is problematic
because it misses the complex workings of power in tourist prac-
tice. Tourists do much more than gaze-they.act, they encounter,
they perform, they effect, and they leave their. m’ark. These “ma-
terial”. ,, m o m p t s are important because they puncture the usual
I . ,

image of the passive gazing tqurist an.d make‘ the, mechanics-and

technologies of powefl explicit,. Interpreting Safiing Private Ryan
through’ the tourist gaze requires one to accept ,that ^the,returii
of the’ aging Private Ryan ‘and his family to the ‘Omaha Beach
graveyard resolves the trauma that the film opens with.24 Spiel-
berg’s cinematic conclusion suggests that t0uris.m’not only sym-
bolizes a.time of ‘peace,,it instigates a psqcess of healing througl;
1 , ,

commemoration.
But that image ‘of resolution ‘covers over Ithe -mechanics of
power that play out in that scene: $hat: are the political/economic
conditions that construct this encounter (e:g., peaceful relations
be’bveen,France and the ,United States that encoui-age tou&m,‘the
wealth ofthe Ryan €amily that allows them to h’ave holidays)? Wliat
, .

subjects are made possible and important here (e.g.; wealth); US

tourists, former soldiers, victorious allies),, and which are silenced
o r excluded (e.g., German tourists, “other”Allied soldiers that par-
ticipated in D-Day, other tourists with no pe;sonal connection to
the. graveyard, the local population)?,Why is this enc,obnte? hap-
pening at’this point in history and what technologies go~into. mak-
ing this encounter. possible now? In encouraging the resolution of
trauma through ,commemoration, the tourist gaze’disciplines the
practices of tourists in accordance with the safety/daiiger cartogra-
phy of global security. To-resist that regulation,’it is,necessary to ‘il-
lustrate how tourists fail, to live ‘up,to the, “proper modes of rever-
ence” +kpecte,d’in Sites bf commemoratiop,,just i s they ixcee‘ci’tlie
disciplining mechanisms aimedtat keeping them in their place.
. , ,~
106 Coiisiiiiiiiig Dnirger

Collapsing War and Tourism

Desiriizg Danger, Pe~$oriningSafety, nnd Tnrgeting Tourists

A reimagined relationship between war and tourism can be under-
stood as a series of already established connections between safety
and danger. The failures and excesses of the tourist gaze illustrate
the contaminations between war and tourism and between safety
and danger. When war zones actually seduce tourists, when soldiers
in war zones make sense of their foreign location through tourist
practices, and when tourists become the explicit targets of terrorist
acts aimed at foreign bodies, the wdtourism, safety/danger con-
stellation implodes.

Tlie Curiosity Factor of Political Tourism:

Froiiz War Zone to Thenze Park
If the starting figuration of the tourist gaze is the safety of home,
and if tourism works according to a discourse of security as well as
a discourse of the extraordinary, then what could be further from
the safe, ordinary home than the dangerous war zone? The tourist
gaze is so adaptable that it now seeks out and colonizes dangerous
places. While recent newspaper articles seek to explain the desire
for “remote, forbidding, and downright dangerous holiday desti-
nations,” travel companies are quickly trying to cash in on this new
brand of political tourism called “war-zone hopping.”25 Many
tourists are not Content with what they see as the “already pack-
aged” superficial circuits of mass tourism. AS a result, intrepid trav-
elers are finding other ways to satiate their desire for a rare com-
bination of the exotic and the dangerous. While the discourse of the
extraordinary remains, the discourse of security is completely
turned around so danger is now the object of desire.
In trying to attract these intrepid travelers, recent sites of war
have developed their own economy of tourist signs and markers
that highlight sites of carnage for visitors. The earlier example of
Dubrovnik suggested that the marketing strategies used to lure
tourists back had to evacuate all signs of recent warfare. But what
you find when you arrive at Dubrovnik is something quite the op-
posite. At strategic places around the walls of the city, there are
maps that show in detail exactly where bombs exploded-maps
that direct the tourist along a malevolent, rather than sanitized,
cartography. Black triangles indicate roofs damaged by direct im-
pact; white triangles indicate roofs hit by shrapnel; black dots indi- .
cate where pavement has been damaged by bombs or shrapnel.26 It
 Debbie Lisle 107

is now possible to tour the city and focus specifically on these sites
of recent destruction.insteaa of the more,obvious signs. of, aiicient
architecture and cultural difference., Rather tlian as an “undis:
turbed” historical site, Dubrovnik is experienced as a site of.recent
military, aggression still surrounded by the seductive elenieiit of
.
danger. This desire’.forvisible ,signs of war damage’is expressed :in
the postcard shown in Figure 3, one of a set of four available at tlie
main tourist office in Dubrovnik.27 Tourists are. thus. able to witness
how “undisturbed”.national heritage- (embodied-in, th’e sixteenth- ,

century architecture) bedame an explicit target in the recent fvar.

More importantly for the war ,tourists, they can ‘see‘andtouch the
signs of recent conflict-from bullet holes and :shell damage to
bomb craters,
Likewise in Belfast, national and private tour :companies.have
been,quick to recognize the benefits of this,new. brand of’political
tourism. As the Northern Ireland Tourist Board .suggests: “The
opportunity to harness this‘“curiosity factor” should. not be over-
looked as a positive factor in encouraging people to visit and under-
stand Northern Ireland.”28 Before t h e recent’tourism campaigns,
public buses avoided the “dangerous”,areas’, put now Citybus, oper-
ates a “LivingHistory” tour that focuses on the “oddly fascinating . .
. vivid and sometimes highly artistic displays of street mural propa-
ganda” depicting Belfast’s “colourful history.”29In this case, tourism
in Belfast is less about the passive consumption of a “magical coun-
try” than it is about actively questing’for authentic -scenes of ‘‘tlie
troubles.” The~photographerof the murals shown in Figures 4 aiid 5
explains the desire to visit recent war zone-s in much the saine.ivay
, _

that Fukuyama expresses a nostalgia for the battles of hiStory:30. ’

, ..
With the Berlin Wall gone and the.rest:of Europe which used ‘to
be behind the Iron Curtain now seen as boring rather tliai1,ex- 1

I _ ,
otic, ’there .is .no tourist thrill left to counterbalance the per;
ceived boredom of social democratic;materialist, consumption- ’
oriented,Germany.Ireland is still romantic and exotic; it is the
closest thrill ,I
,, ’
, .
. .
~.
It remains to be. seen what will happen to these sites as’they are
’

,-+ckly,engulfed by “political tourism,” but we ,can surmise that with

the. current marketing of places ‘like Dubtovnik and Belfast, war
tourism is fast,becoming a part of contemporary ladventure travel.”
The recent transformation of Sarajevo.illustrates a more con,
temporary versionL:ooi‘ tdyrism’i colonization ‘ o f the war zone: 111
early 1996, a year.after -the conflict ceased, there were tours oper-
ating in Sarajevo that, began at sniper’s alley and ‘then moved
, ,
m
aJ
L
a
.-M
U
Figure 4

Figure 5
through the marketplace, the cemetery, and the damaged mosques.
Along this “Massacre Trail,” tourists were able to purchase bullets,
shells, and shrapnel as souvenirs of their visit to the destroyed city.32.
It should be clear that the boundary being negotiated in these ex-
amples of contemporary war tourism is that between curiosity and
voyeurism. That limit was definitely crossed by the Italian travel
agent who offered his clients a special “October war-zone” tour in
..
Bosnia: “For $25,000 apiece, ‘a dozen crazy people’ . could spend
two weeks in a war zone, accompanied’by doctors and security
forces, but without weapons of their own-only cameras.”33
As these events suggest, the discourses surrounding the war-
tourism relationship are no longer the extraordinary and the se-
cure, but rather a curious combination of danger, seduction, aes-
thetics, and the secure. As one tourist to Sarajevo put it:. ‘‘While’
there is a feel of ‘war chic’ because of the pock-marked buildings,
the visitor is safe.”34This kind of “safeguarded voyeurism” is an in- ,
tegral part of the danger at work here: tourists are protected from
harm because the conflict itself is over-but only just. Even in the
most intrepid journeys, the powerful discourse of security remains.
The desire for danger is still sanitized by the mobile and sensitive
nature of tourism: because tourists are defined by their movement,
they can also move away from any “real” threat to their lives. Un-
like soldiers who are stuck in territories and positions, the tourist
retains the privilege of escape.

A Tour of Duty:
Leisurely Soldiers and the Performance of Safety
While it is possible to understand how holidaymakers are subject to
the disciplining practices of the tourist gaze, it is more difficult to
see how those outside the “zones’ofsafety” can be regulated in the
same way. As Sergeant Horvath’s collection of foreign soil in Sav-
ing Private Ryan illustrates, even soldiers experiencing the trauma
of war adopt some version of the modern tourist gaze. ,Miat sol-
diers and tourists have in common is mobility, their physical mi-
gration from one territory (home) to another (foreign land). Be-
cause so much of our postwar movement in the world is governed
by the tourist gaze, it makes sense that soldiers being transported
by boat, plane, car, and tank might make sense of their movement
in similar ways to tourists. While soldiers and tourists find them-
selves-inextraordinary surroundings for very different reasons (the
former for battle, the latter for curiosity), the way they interpret
and make sense of those surroundings bears resemblance. For ex-
ample, if the tourist gaze cannot enter the war zone, why do sol-
diers take cameras on their operations?
 Soldiers in foreign lands call upon the same consumptive “gaz-
ing” practices as tourists: they passively view the sights, they apprc-
ciater the picturesque, they seek out the extraordinary, and, like
Sergeant Horvath, they collect foreign souvenirs.3~The connec-
tions between tlie tourist gaze and military operations are made
explicit in recruitment posters aimed at potential soldiers: “Enlist
as one of the 50,000 men for overseas service. Personally con-
ducted tours for soldier sightseers” (1919) or “Navy. It’s the chance
to travel around the world and see places most peoplc only read
about” (1993).36 As the modern tourist gaze instructs, all subjects
moving to foreign landscapes-including soldiers-memorialize
their journeys with snapshots, postcards, purchases, and souvenirs.
Because the governing regime of the tourist gaze tclls subjccts whai
they are supposed to do when traveling abroad, soldiers clocu-
menting a wartime “tour” of duty overseas align with tourists
recording a peacetime “holiday” in foreign lands.
This is a complicated fracture: the tourist gaze is part of a
larger network of practices witliin which soldiers clonieslicate hos-
tile foreign spaces and make them more familiar, more sarc, morc
like home. This “~nilitai-ized”tourist gaze emerges i n RSrR sites
where occupying forces make use of existing leisure spaccs in
order to rejuvenate their fighting forces (e.g., China Beach for US
soldiers in Vietnam and the Dalmatian coast for peacekcepcrs dur-
ing the Bosnian conflict). When soldiers play at being tourists-by
taking pictures, by enjoying RkR-the tourist gaze is exceeded: its
safety/danger opposition is ruptured by the placement of safe en-
claves within hostile war zones. Just as tourists become soldiers by
deliberately going to dangerous places, soldiers become tourists
when they transform a threatening war zone into a “hoinc away
from home.”

The War on Tozirisni: Tnrgetiiig Sites niid Bodies

A more obvious collapse of the war/tourism opposition is the tar-
geting of foreign tourists in the service of terrorism. For exaniplc,
tourists visiting L L ~ XinO 1997
~ were attacked by six gunmen who
claimed to be members of a vanguard Islamic organizaiion. Of the
fifty-eight tourists killed in the attack, several were forcign nation-
als from Britain, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, and F r a n c ~TOW .~~
ists are foreign civilians on foreign soil, and as such they become
the symbolic representation of otherness. In the casc of LUXO~; the
tourists symbolized Western hegemony.
However, it is not just the bodies oE tourists that arc being tar-
geted by acts of war-it is tlie material sites of tourisin aswell. Wliilc
mobile tourists are able to avoid places that qualify as dangcrous
112 Consitniiizg Dnizger

(or at least have an escape route planned if they are really intre-
pid), material artifacts in “hot spots” remain available for terrorist
or military aggression. For example, the world was outraged when
the JNA bombed the ancient city of Dubrovnik because the United
Nations had declared Dubrovnik a world-heritage city. But this
global status is precisely why the walled city was targeted: it sym-
bolized the heritage of the Croatian nation, and to destroy key sym-
bols in a nation’s memory is to destroy its material fabric and iden-
tity. Because buildings last longer than citizens and subjects, in
many ways they are more appropriate repositories of national
memory-all of which makes the bombing and burning of the Ii-
brary in Sarajevo or the terrorist attack on the Uffizi Museum in
Florence so abhorrent. While the loss of tourist life embodies its
own horror, the loss of memories embedded in historically signifi-
cant sites and buildings can also be regarded as a tragedy.
These complex linkages between war, heritage, and tourism
are expressed by Israel’s actions following the Gulf War: “After the
war, Israel billed the U.S. $200 million in reparations for direct war
damages from Iraqi scud attacks and an additional $400 million in
lost revenues from tourism. Simultaneously, the ruins of Kuwait al-
most immediately began to draw tourist attention.”38 As this exam-
ple demonstrates, targeting historically significant sites destroys not
only the architectural and cultural heritage of a community, it also
destroys the potential for future tourism. If one accepts the initial
formulation of war and tourism as separate practices, acts of ter-
rorist violence against tourists would destroy the assumption that
the tourist gaze ensures safety. In other words, tourists should have
stopped going to Egypt after the Luxor bombing. But instead, the
opposite has happened: travel tolthe Middle East is growing, and
Egypt continues to receive an annual income of $3 billion from
tourism.39 It seems the modern tourist gaze operates undeterred by
the increasing terrorist attacks on its subjects. It continues to in-
vade and retreat at will, it continues to colonize “unstable” but
“highly strategic” areas (the Middle East, the Balkans), and in
doing so it increasingly positions tourist practices and military OP-
erations alongside one another.

International Relations and the Tourist Gaze

If we accept the global imaginary of safety and danger, then a sep-

aration of war and tourism seems logical. But that kind of under-
standing does not allow for the bus tours currently going to Sara-
jevo, the backpackers crawling through the Chu Chi tunnels along
 ‘Debbie Lisle 113

the Mekong (most not even born during the Vietnam War), or visi-
tors gawking at the remains of the Omagh bombing. This article ar:
gues that the discourse of global security informing the tourist gaze
must be reworked in order to capture the multiple practices that
tourists engage in. With the examples of voyeurism, soldiers taking
pictures, terrorists bombing tourists, and tours of recent:war zones,
the initial separation of war and tourism cannot be sustained.
By collapsing the events of war and tourism, it is possible to as$
how’the tourist.gaze might also,inform our studies and’practices in
international relations. The subjects who participate in and make
sense of world politics-scholars, researchers, diplomats, civil ser-
vants, aid workers, bureaucrats-adopt a “gaze” that is similar to
the tourist. Just as the tourist gaze allows visitors to locate and un-
derstand the “natural:’ beauty of the Grand Canyon, scholars and
practitioners of world politics are able to locate and understand
the violence and conflict of places like ,Belfast and Bosnia. The
“spectacular site” is to tourism what war zones are to international
relations-the former stuffed with an ‘abundance$of ‘the -“‘extra-
ordinary,” the latter overflowing’with danger, power, and vidolencp.‘
How do we, as students and scholars in international relatiohs,
locate danger and conflict-if ,not as tourists? ’Maybe the geographi-
cal and historical displacements at the heart of all travel are ;fur-
ther augmented by our intellectual distance from the world, locked
1 .

as we are in theories, ideas, and debaies. Perhaps tourists ,are less

offensive than we are. After all, they just,vant to look and con-’
sume, whereas we want to rescue, save, and change the world-we
want to make it a better place. I want to suggest‘tliat,in the midst of
those normative desires, we are .too often paralyzed by ,a:ipaiticular
j /

version of ambulance chasing. Maybe tourists; passive; coinplain-.

ing, and disgruntled as they often are, are less righteous’.(moreeth-
ical?) than<the meddling NGO worker, the>visionarydiplomat, or,
&,pedantic IR
. ?. scholar. ‘ ’

Nofes

The author would like to thank Tarak Barkawi, Andrew Linklater, and Mar-
tin%Coward for comments on an earlier draft of this article; audience mem-
bers and participants at the 1998 BISA panel “DeterritorializingDisasters”
for their provocative questions; and Simon Bainbridge, Ann Julie Crozier,
Richard Kirkland, and Patricia Molloy for more specific suggestions of
war/tourist sites.
1. Valene Smith, “War and Tourism: An American Ethnography,”An-
nals of Tourism Reseawli 25, no. 1 (1998): 202. Smith’sarticle suggests that
World War I1 caused tourism through the shift of transport technologies
114 Coiisiriiring Dflnger

from military to.civilian sectors, the emergence of “overseas” as a concrete

notion for returning soldiers, and the business opportunities in the tourist
industry created by postwar economic programs.
2. Louis D’Amore, “Tourism-the World’s Peace Industry,”Journal of
Travel Research 27 (summer 1988): 39.
3. Smith offers human rights and intervention as examples of the
positive normative connections between tourism and global security.
Firstly, as a “human right,” the freedom to travel is attached to the list of
more “fundamental”rights (e.g., freedom of speech) currently striving for
universal expression. Secondly, the potential economic benefits of modern
tourism can be used retroactively as a justification for military interven-
tion. As Smith suggests, “the avoidance of war through intervention, if suc-
cessful, preserves political hegemony and tourism revenues.” Smith, note
1, p. 220.
4. John Urry, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel i n Conteniflorary Soci-
dies (London: Sage, 1990). Urry’s study is important because it gives the
usual statistical and economic indicators (e.g., arrivals, departures, rev-
enues) a more sociological meaning: it is not statistics that produce the
tourist gaze; rather, it is the way those figures are given meaning and value
within prevailing social and cultural discourses. See also Dean MacCan-
nell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class ,(New York: Schocken
Books, 1976) and Emnfty Meeting Grounds: Tile Tourist Paters (London: Rout-
ledge, 1992).
5. Mark Brace, “Looking for Trouble?” Guardian travel section, Janu-
ary 23, 1999, p. 9; Andrew Mueller, “Postcards from the Edge,” “The
Guide,” Guardian, January 17-23, 1998, p. 4.
6. Tourists can identify “hot spots” by accessing the daily travel warn-
ings issued by national governments concerned about the safety of their
citizens abroad. See http://travel.state.gov/travel-1varnings.h tml for the lat-
est US consular information sheets.
7. Robert Kaplan, The Ends ofthe Earth: Journey in the Dawn oftlie 21st
Century (London: Papermac, 1997)-see quotations from book reviews on
the back cover.
8. Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?” National Interest 1 6 (sum-
mer 1989): 18.
9. These “battlefield” sites (along with the beds of famous heroes and
presidents) were the subject of artist-architects Diller and Scofidio’s 1994
traveling installation “Suitcase Studies: The Production of a National Past,”
documented in their Back lo the Front: Tourism of War (Basse-Normandie:
F.R.A.C., 1994), pp. 44-105. This text, edited by Diller and Scofidio, is an
invaluable critical engagement with the war/tourism relationship as all of
the essays are provocative and theoretically sophisticated commentaries on
the conjunction of danger and voyeurism.
10. Smith, note 1, p. 205. See also Valene Smith, “War and Its Tourist
Attractions,” in A. Pizam and Y. Mansfield, eds., Tourism, Crime and Intm-
national Secun’ty (Chichester, UK: Wiley, 1996).
11. Diller and Scofidio, note 9, pp. 25-26.
12. For further comments on historical forgetting, see Sylvie Zavatta,
“The Past Perfect(ed) or The Creation of an Historical Space,”.in Diller
and Scofidio, note 9, pp. 8-17. Phyllis Turnbull refers to the cross-genera-
tional appeal of tourism by explaining how the film shown at the USS Ari-
zona memorial in Pearl Harbor is directed at those born well after the raid;
 Debbie Lisle 115

see “Remembering Pearl Harbor: The Semiotics of the Arizona Memorial,”

in Michael J. Shapiro and Hayward Alker, eds.; Challenging Bounda~ies:
Global Flows, Territorial Identities (Minneapolis: Un’iversity of Minnesota
Press, 1996), p. 418.
13. “Stop the Das Reich Division,” in Holt’s Tours 1998 brochure Bat-
tlefields and History (Canterbury, UK Simon Edridge,. 1998), p. 23.
14. Sandra Weber, “War, Terrorism, and Tourism,” in Annals of T o u r h i
Research 25, no. 3: 760-763 summarizes the proceedings of the interna-
tional conference “War, Terrorism and Tourism: Crisis and‘Recovery,” held
’-
in Dubrovnik, September 15-27, 1997.
15. “Croatia A New Welcome, An Old Friend,”,advertisement by the
Croatian Tourist Board, in “Weeke’nd,”Guardian, February 14, 1998, p. .58;
16. See John Cunningham, “Travel Paradise Rebuilt,” in ‘‘Mkekend,”
Guardian,July 5 , 1997, p. GO. 9

17. Bill Rolston, “Selling Tourism in a Country at War,” Race and Class
37, no. 1 (1995): 2 4 2 5 . For another reading of the NITB’s “asserting nor-
mality” strategy, see Spurgeon Thompson, “The Commodification of Cul-
ture and Decolonization in Northern Ireland,” Irish Studies Review 7, n o . . l
(1999) 53-63. ,/ . )<I’

18.aNorthern Ireland Tourist Office, “The Day of tlie Men and Women
of Peace Must Surely Come” (Belfast: NITB, 1989): 59.. ’ ,

, - 19. Ibid., p. 72.

’ ’ 20. Rolston, note 17, pp. 30-31.
21. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it points to important areas
of tourism that require politicization; see esp. Jean Keefe and Sue Wheat,
Tourisin and Human Rights (London: Tourism Concern, 1998).
22. In response to various criticisms, Urry restates his claims in “The
Tourist Gaze Revisited,” American Behavioral Scientist 36, no. 2 , (1992):
172-186. I .

23. David Clianey, “Metaphors of Tourism,” paper presented at “Prac-

tising Places and Tourist Performances” Conference, April 6-7, 1998,
Durham University. , .

24. Steven Spielberg recently explained an incident of tourist excess:

in an ironic misinterpretation of the film Saving Private Ryan,’ tourists in
Normandy visiting World War 11 lombstones asked the caretakers to direct
them to the grave of Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg in an interview wit11
Mark Cousins, BBC2 “War Stories,” October 1998).,The complex relations
between fact, fiction, tourism, and spectacle are also apparent in another
Spielberg-inspired event, the Schindler’s List tour currently operating in
makow, Poland; see Chris Rojek, “Indexing, Dragging, and the Social
Construction of Tourist Sights,” in John Urry and Chris Rojek, eds., Tour-
ing Cultures: Transformalions in Travel and Theory (London: Routledge,
1997), pp. 54-55.
25. For various definitions of “political tourism,” see Russell Watson,
‘“Do It, Be It, Live 1t’-Generation Global: Young Americans Take On the
World,” Newsweel, October 6, 1997, p. 34; Mueller, ndte 5; Smith, note 1, p.
219; and Rolston, note 17, pp. 32-34. Political tourism differs from other
tourist fascinations with trauma such as those currently visiting Princess
Diana’s crash scene in Paris, sites that Rojek refers to as Black Spots. See
Chris Rojek, Ways of Escape: Modern Eansformations in Leisure and Travel
(London: Macmillan, 1993), pp. 137-145.
2G. Cunningham, note 16, p. GO.
116 Corisrrnriiig Danger

27. Design and photography of the postcard is by Damir Fabijanic.

The card is printed by Multigraf d.o.0 (Dubrovnik, Croatia: Institute for
the Restoration of Dubrovnik).
28. Northern Ireland Tourist Board, “The Best of Northern Ireland,”
reprinted in Rolston, note 17, p. 27.
29. Rolston, note 17, p. 31; Thompson, note 17, pp. 57-63.
30. Figure 4 shows the mural “Newtownards Road, Belfast, 1994.” The
mural reads, in part: “For as long as one hundred of us remain alive we
shall never in any way consent to submit to the rule of the Irish”-plate
21 in Bill Rolston, Drawing Support 2: Murals of War and Peace (Belfast: Be-
yond the Pale Publications, 1995). Figure 5 shows “Rossville Street, Derry
1981, ‘Get the Brits Out’; Britain, with face of Margaret Thatcher, abuses
Ireland”-plate 88 in Bill Rolston, Drawing Sufiport: Murals in the North of
Ireland (Belfast: Beyond the Pale Publications, 1992).
31. Rolston, note 17, p. 35.
32. Dominic 0 “Reilly, “Sarajevo’s ‘Massacre Trail’ Lures Groups of
War Tourists,” in GloOe and Mail, March 1, 1997; see also Molloy’s article
in this issue of Alternatives, “Theatrical Release.”
33. Italian tour description quoted in Thomas Keenan “Live from
. . . ” in Diller and Scofidio, note 9, p. 136. See also Robert Young Pelton
et al., Fielding’s the World’s Most Dangerous Places (Redondo Beach, Calif.:
Fielding Worldwide, 1998).
34. Scarlett MccGwire, “Open for Business Again,” Guardian, travel
section, May 16, 1998, p. 14.
35. An element of horror emerges here when the souvenirs in ques-
tion consist of body parts of victims (e.g., bones and ears). This is exem-
plified in the character named Souvenirs who collects the teeth of Japa-
nese POWs in Jim Jones’s novel The Thin Red Line (New York: Scribner’s
Sons, 1962); see also James J. Weingartner, “Trophies of War: U.S. Troops
and the Mutilation ofJapanese War Dead, 1941-1945,” Pacific Historical Re-
view 61 (February 1992): 53-67.
36. The 1919 slogan is from an army recruitment ad in Collier’s Weekly;
the 1993 slogan is from a navy recruitment ad on television-both from
Diller and Scofidio, note 9, pp. 19-20.
37. Tom Chesshyre, “Signs of Life Emerge from the Ruins,’’ Times
Weekend, November 14, 1998, p. 27.
38. Diller and Scofidio, note 9, p. 20.
39. The massive increase in security at this site prompted one official
to declare, “You are in more danger visiting places like Washington DC in
the United States,” Tom Chesshyre, note 37, p. 27.