Chris Ryan

Following the publication of the work of Lennon & Foley (2000) entitled " Dark Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster" a significant level of interest was expressed in the subject matter. To avoid duplication of the chapters that follow it can simply be stated that Lennon and Foley sought to distinguish between, on the one hand, a "simple" curiousity with past events that involved visitation to sites of past battles, disasters and places of possibly morbid interest and, on the other hand, a phenomenon that was arguably more meaningful because the sites of death, disaster and man's inhumanity toward man raised questions about the nature of modernity. Such sites were also of global importance and comprised events that had occurred within living memory.

The case studies that Lennon and Foley examined included those associated with the Third Reich and especially those associated with the holocaust (but including the military hospital built by slave labour in Jersey), the war sites of the First and Second World Wars and the Dallas site of President Kennedy's assassination. The role of technology and globalization and the meanings in contemporary society to which they in conjunction with dark tourism give rise...