Heritage and Dark Tourism

Dear Colleagues,

Dark tourism (Foley & Lennon, 1996) or thanatourism (Seaton, 1996) is the act of traveling to sites associated with death and atrocities and has become an increasingly ubiquitous phenomenon in contemporary society (Stone, 2013). Dark tourism is now becoming a research ground in which scholars can locate a diverse range of death and atrocities-related topics and tourist-experience studies. As a rigorous academic field, dark tourism examination remains in its infancy. In spite of the recent increasing number of research papers, much of the literature remains supply-side focused, especially on the terminology and definitions of dark tourism, which provide little clarity or consent on the core of such a form of tourism (Ashworth & Isaac, 2015; Hartmann, 2014). Dark tourism focused on three main angles, either the demand‐side or the supply‐side of dark tourism, or taking a more holistic view, examining both demand and supply sides. Some studies have accentuated the diversity and variety of dark sites, focusing on defining and classifying dark tourism manifestations based on the attributes of sites (Kang et al., 2012); Miles (2002), who distinguished between dark, darker and darkest sites, and Stone’s (2006) proposed spectrum, ranging from lightest to darkest sites. Visits to dark tourism sites have been theorised and studied under wider frameworks, such as heritage tourism (Poria, Butler, & Airey, 2003), dissonant heritage tourism (Tunbridge & Ashworth, 1996) unwanted heritage (Isaac & Budryte, 2015), and pilgrimage (Belhassen & Santos, 2006), and scrutinized from an interpretative standpoint (Uzzell & Ballantyne, 1998). Calls for more visitor‐oriented research have resulted in studies that focus on the question of tourist motivations to visit dark sites (Stone and Sharpley, 2008; Hyde and Harman, 2011). Only a handful of studies have examined the demand side of dark tourism from a tourist perspective, such as research on motivations, simply why people visit or do not visit dark tourism sites, and how they experience such sites. Most research on the motivations and experiences of dark tourism does not leverage any empirical data but is rather is based on conceptual frameworks (Isaac & Çakmak, 2014). Recently Isaac and Çakmak (2014, p. 176) were still insisting that “conceptualisation should be based upon the links between site attributes and reasons why tourist visit the site”.

This Special Issue aims to encourage and advance theoretical, conceptual, empirical research on heritage and dark tourism. Some indicative but not exhaustive themes for papers in the context of Heritage and Dark Tourism are:

• Government perspectives towards dark tourism
• Local community perspective towards dark tourism development
• Unwanted/undesirable heritage
• Ethical perspectives on dark tourism
• Emotions & dark tourism
• Individual actions/behavior and dark tourism
• Dark tourism experience
• Dark tourism and heritage landscape
• Dark tourism and violent death
• Tourism to memorial sites
• Politics of dark tourism
• Dark tourism in conflict-ridden destinations
• Theoretical and methodological developments to understand the experiences of dark tourism
• Philosophical issues and methodologies in dark tourism

Abstracts of 300 words, which contribute to understanding of Heritage & Dark Tourism, are required no later than 29 September 2018. Please submit your abstract to Dr. Rami K. Isaac: [email protected]

Dr. Rami Isaac
Guest Editor

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