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Dark Tourism in an Age of ‘Spectacular Death’

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The Palgrave Handbook of Dark Tourism Studies

Abstract

We live in a dominion of the dead. We have always done so. Throughout history the pact between the living and the dead has been one of mutual obligation. We ritualise the dead with a memorialised afterlife, where the deceased depend on the living to maintain their memory. In return, the dead counsel us to know ourselves, provide procedure to our lives, systematise our social relations, and help restrain our ravaging impetuous exploits. In essence, the dead maintain our social and cultural order and, consequently, act as our immortal custodians. We offer the dead a commemorative future so that they may bequeath us an honoured past: we help them live on in memory so that they may help us go forward (Harrison, 2003). Yet, while death is universal across time and cultures, dying is not. In other words, death is a finite ending to a biological life while dying embraces varying socio-cultural processes that are inherently influenced by life-worlds.

Death is the problem of the living. Dead people have no problems.

Norbert Elias (2001: 3)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK

    Philip R. Stone

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  1. Philip R. Stone
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  1. University of Central Lancashire, Preston, United Kingdom

    Philip R. Stone

  2. University of Colorado Denver, Denver, USA

    Rudi Hartmann

  3. University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Tony Seaton

  4. University of Central Lancashire, Preston, United Kingdom

    Richard Sharpley

  5. Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia

    Leanne White

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Stone, P.R. (2018). Dark Tourism in an Age of ‘Spectacular Death’. In: R. Stone, P., Hartmann, R., Seaton, T., Sharpley, R., White, L. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Dark Tourism Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47566-4_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47566-4_8

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