Critical Theories in Dark Tourism: Issues, Complexities and Future Directions

This book facilitates a critical investigation of gaps in theorizing and framing dark tourism by navigating through some onto-epistemological issues, theoretical entanglements, future possibilities, and the application of critical theoretical perspectives related to affect and emotions, human-animal studies, postcolonialism, feminism, trauma studies, posthumanism, power and identity. In doing so, it advances the need to connect critical theory, pragmatism and contemporary issues of social and global relevance.

＂Given the growing body of critical research within tourism studies, dark tourism has somewhat lagged behind. For example, critical tourism researchers have been examining postcolonialism for two decades, but dark tourism research has only sporadically engaged with this topic. Similarly, the issue of gender has been curiously neglected within dark tourism. In addition, dark tourism research has tended to shy away from the ’big’ challenges facing contemporary societies. Through its engagement with a range of critical theories, this volume not only addresses gaps in the existing dark tourism literature but also moves the debate forward in exciting new directions. This volume is well-placed to demonstrate to other disciplines and fields that dark tourism research can be critical, theoretically grounded, and transformative.＂ - Duncan Light

Nitasha Sharma is a lecturer and Outreach Coordinator at the Department of Geography, University of Alabama, USA. She is a tourism geographer whose research broadly examines the multiple and contested representations of place and spatial behavior through projects situated in critical tourism studies. She specializes in the perception of authenticity, dark tourism, spectral geographies/haunted heritage, magic, and supernatural elements in tourism, rituals, pilgrimage and sacred spaces.

Annaclaudia Martini is an Assistant Professor in Human Geography at the University of Bologna, Italy. Her academic interests include geographies of affect, critical geographies, post-disaster tourism and heritage studies, and qualitative and creative methodologies. She works with disaster-hit communities in the Tohoku region of Japan, looking at the intersections of post-disaster tourism, affects, and community resilience.

Dallen J. Timothy is Professor of Community Resources and Development, and Senior Sustainability Scientist at Arizona State University, USA. He also holds visiting professorships in Mexico, China, Spain, and South Africa. His current tourism research in Africa, Asia, North America, Europe and the Pacific islands includes perspectives on geopolitics and globalization, international borders, pilgrimage, heritage management, retail consumption, human mobility, and sense of place.