Page 34 - Dark Shades of Istria
P. 34
Dark Tourism Theory and Discourse
to war (concentration camps, battlefields, cemeteries) or places of
tragic events and crimes;
• disaster tourism: visits to places of natural disasters with devastating
consequences;
• poverty tourism, which includes tours to slum areas and poverty-
stricken towns;
• suicide tourism, which involves ‘travellers’ going to a particular des-
tination with the intention of committing suicide or those who travel
to the states where euthanasia is legal;
• doomsday tourism: visit because of environmental problems and to
global warming-endangered places.
It is necessary to emphasise the latter, as it does not only cover ar-
eas where there were already casualties. Thus, these are areas of fear of
death and destruction. They also include areas where animal and plant
species, not just human beings, are endangered. Visiting these areas for
empathy and education puts this form of tourism and tourists at an even
higher civilisational level, especially if this should lead to changes (and
it is not about gloating over the misfortune of others). In this context,
Seaton (1996) was more traditional in developing the following five cate-
gories of dark activities related to travelling to:
• sites of public executions;⁸
• sites of individual or mass deaths: areas of former battlefields, death
camps and sites of genocide, places where celebrities died, sites of
publicised murders, the homes of infamous murderers;
• memorials or internment sites;
• sites/areas with the purpose of viewing evidence of death or sym-
bolic representations of it, e.g. ‘morbid museums;’
• places or events of re-enactments or simulation of death, e.g. re-
enactment of famous battles.
Kennell et al. (2018, p. 948), on the other hand, focused only on so-
called dark events, which are not exclusively related to the dark tourism
context and are usually marked by social dissonances/deviances (e.g. the
violent behaviour of participants, intolerance). They adopted Frost and
Laing’s (2013, pp. 36–42) typology and listed:
⁸ After the report of Amnesty International (2022), public executions in 2021 were carried
out only in Yemen.
34
to war (concentration camps, battlefields, cemeteries) or places of
tragic events and crimes;
• disaster tourism: visits to places of natural disasters with devastating
consequences;
• poverty tourism, which includes tours to slum areas and poverty-
stricken towns;
• suicide tourism, which involves ‘travellers’ going to a particular des-
tination with the intention of committing suicide or those who travel
to the states where euthanasia is legal;
• doomsday tourism: visit because of environmental problems and to
global warming-endangered places.
It is necessary to emphasise the latter, as it does not only cover ar-
eas where there were already casualties. Thus, these are areas of fear of
death and destruction. They also include areas where animal and plant
species, not just human beings, are endangered. Visiting these areas for
empathy and education puts this form of tourism and tourists at an even
higher civilisational level, especially if this should lead to changes (and
it is not about gloating over the misfortune of others). In this context,
Seaton (1996) was more traditional in developing the following five cate-
gories of dark activities related to travelling to:
• sites of public executions;⁸
• sites of individual or mass deaths: areas of former battlefields, death
camps and sites of genocide, places where celebrities died, sites of
publicised murders, the homes of infamous murderers;
• memorials or internment sites;
• sites/areas with the purpose of viewing evidence of death or sym-
bolic representations of it, e.g. ‘morbid museums;’
• places or events of re-enactments or simulation of death, e.g. re-
enactment of famous battles.
Kennell et al. (2018, p. 948), on the other hand, focused only on so-
called dark events, which are not exclusively related to the dark tourism
context and are usually marked by social dissonances/deviances (e.g. the
violent behaviour of participants, intolerance). They adopted Frost and
Laing’s (2013, pp. 36–42) typology and listed:
⁸ After the report of Amnesty International (2022), public executions in 2021 were carried
out only in Yemen.
34
