{"title":"Young tourists’ experiences at dark tourism sites: Towards a conceptual framework","authors":"M. M. Kerr, P. Stone, Rebecca H. Price","doi":"10.1177/1468797620959048","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"While dark tourism aimed at adults reminds them of past tragic fights, faults and follies, thousands of children and youth also consume inherent memorial messages at dark tourism sites. This paper addresses these unnoticed childhood encounters, about which scholarly discourse remains conspicuously silent. At present, dark tourism research focuses almost exclusively on adults and does not adequately explain young tourists’ experiences. How children experience dark tourism sites has much to do with their understanding of death. Because younger children may not possess an adult-like knowledge of death, they are unable to experience a site as dark. Other theoretical disparities include children’s limited agency in choosing their destinations and their unique and often playful exploration of dark places. To address the inadequacy of current dark tourism conceptualisations, we propose a new framework to encourage scholarly interrogation of children’s experiences at dark tourism sites. Drawing from multiple sources including archival studies and original research with youth, we offer a rationale for considering four major, intersecting influences on a young tourist’s experience: understanding of death, visit preparation (at home or in school), site and interpretation features and dynamics of the specific visit (e.g. group membership, norms and itinerary). Ultimately, this paper uncovers potential research avenues to bring children’s perspectives and experiences to the core of dark tourism research.","PeriodicalId":47199,"journal":{"name":"Tourist Studies","volume":"21 1","pages":"198 - 218"},"PeriodicalIF":3.3000,"publicationDate":"2020-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/1468797620959048","citationCount":"8","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Tourist Studies","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1468797620959048","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"HOSPITALITY, LEISURE, SPORT & TOURISM","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 8
Abstract
While dark tourism aimed at adults reminds them of past tragic fights, faults and follies, thousands of children and youth also consume inherent memorial messages at dark tourism sites. This paper addresses these unnoticed childhood encounters, about which scholarly discourse remains conspicuously silent. At present, dark tourism research focuses almost exclusively on adults and does not adequately explain young tourists’ experiences. How children experience dark tourism sites has much to do with their understanding of death. Because younger children may not possess an adult-like knowledge of death, they are unable to experience a site as dark. Other theoretical disparities include children’s limited agency in choosing their destinations and their unique and often playful exploration of dark places. To address the inadequacy of current dark tourism conceptualisations, we propose a new framework to encourage scholarly interrogation of children’s experiences at dark tourism sites. Drawing from multiple sources including archival studies and original research with youth, we offer a rationale for considering four major, intersecting influences on a young tourist’s experience: understanding of death, visit preparation (at home or in school), site and interpretation features and dynamics of the specific visit (e.g. group membership, norms and itinerary). Ultimately, this paper uncovers potential research avenues to bring children’s perspectives and experiences to the core of dark tourism research.
期刊介绍:
Tourist Studies is a multi-disciplinary journal providing a platform for the development of critical perspectives on the nature of tourism as a social phenomenon through a qualitative lens. Theoretical and multi-disciplinary. Tourist Studies provides a critical social science approach to the study of the tourist and the structures which influence tourist behaviour and the production and reproduction of tourism. The journal examines the relationship between tourism and related fields of social inquiry. Tourism and tourist styles consumption are not only emblematic of many features of contemporary social change, such as mobility, restlessness, the search for authenticity and escape, but they are increasingly central to economic restructuring, globalization, the sociology of consumption and the aestheticization of everyday life. Tourist Studies analyzes these features of tourism from a multi-disciplinary perspective and seeks to evaluate, compare and integrate approaches to tourism from sociology, socio-psychology, leisure studies, cultural studies, geography and anthropology. Global Perspective. Tourist Studies takes a global perspective of tourism, widening and challenging the established views of tourism presented in current periodical literature. Tourist Studies includes: Theoretical analysis with a firm grounding in contemporary problems and issues in tourism studies, qualitative analyses of tourism and the tourist experience, reviews linking theory and policy, interviews with scholars at the forefront of their fields, review essays on particular fields or issues in the study of tourism, review of key texts, publications and visual media relating to tourism studies, and notes on conferences and other events of topical interest to the field of tourism studies.