Consuming danger: Reimagining the war/tourism divide

Alternatives

Volumn 25, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 91-116

  Lisle, Debbie ^a  

^a QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY BELFAST   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 24944485620     PISSN: 03043754     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/030437540002500106     Document Type: Article

References (50)

1. Valerie Smith, "War and Tourism: An American Ethnography," Annals of Tourism Research 25, no. 1 (1998): 202. Smith's article suggests that World War II caused tourism through the shift of transport technologies from military to civilian sectors, the emergence of "overseas" as a concrete notion for returning soldiers, and the business opportunities in the tourist industry created by postwar economic programs.
2. Louis D'Amore, "Tourism - the World's Peace Industry," Journal of Travel Research 27 (summer 1988): 39.
3. Smith offers human rights and intervention as examples of the positive normative connections between tourism and global security. Firstly, as a "human right," the freedom to travel is attached to the list of more "fundamental" rights (e.g., freedom of speech) currently striving for universal expression. Secondly, the potential economic benefits of modern tourism can be used retroactively as a justification for military intervention. As Smith suggests, "the avoidance of war through intervention, if successful, preserves political hegemony and tourism revenues." Smith, note 1, p. 220.
4. John Urry, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies (London: Sage, 1990). Urry's study is important because it gives the usual statistical and economic indicators (e.g., arrivals, departures, revenues) a more sociological meaning: it is not statistics that produce the tourist gaze; rather, it is the way those figures are given meaning and value within prevailing social and cultural discourses.
5. See also Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Schocken Books, 1976)
6. and Empty Meeting Grounds: The Tourist Papers (London: Routledge, 1992).
7. Mark Brace, "Looking for Trouble?" Guardian travel section, January 23, 1999, p. 9;
8. Andrew Mueller, "Postcards from the Edge," "The Guide," Guardian, January 17-23, 1998, p. 4.
9. Tourists can identify "hot spots" by accessing the daily travel warnings issued by national governments concerned about the safety of their citizens abroad. See http://travel.state.gov/travel_warnings.html for the latest US consular information sheets.
10. Robert Kaplan, The Ends of the Earth: Journey in the Dawn of the 21st Century (London: Papermac, 1997) - see quotations from book reviews on the back cover.
11. Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History?" National Interest 16 (summer 1989): 18.
12. These "battlefield" sites (along with the beds of famous heroes and presidents) were the subject of artist-architects Diller and Scofidio's 1994 traveling installation "Suitcase Studies: The Production of a National Past," documented in their Back to the Front: Tourisms of War (Basse-Normandie: F.R.A.C., 1994), pp. 44-105. This text, edited by Diller and Scofidio, is an invaluable critical engagement with the war/tourism relationship as all of the essays are provocative and theoretically sophisticated commentaries on the conjunction of danger and voyeurism.
13. Smith; note 1, p. 205. See also Valene Smith, "War and Its Tourist Attractions," in A. Pizam and Y. Mansfield, eds., Tourism, Crime and International Security (Chichester, UK: Wiley, 1996).
14. Diller and Scofidio, note 9, pp. 25-26.
15. For further comments on historical forgetting, see Sylvie Zavatta, "The Past Perfect(ed) or The Creation of an Historical Space," in Diller and Scofidio, note 9, pp. 8-17.
16. Phyllis Turnbull refers to the cross-generational appeal of tourism by explaining how the film shown at the USS Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor is directed at those born well after the raid; see "Remembering Pearl Harbor: The Semiotics of the Arizona Memorial," in Michael J. Shapiro and Hayward Alker, eds., Challenging Boundaries: Global Flows, Territorial Identities (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), p. 418.
17. "Stop the Das Reich Division," in Holt's Tours 1998 brochure Battlefields and History (Canterbury, UK: Simon Edridge, 1998), p. 23.
18. Sandra Weber, "War, Terrorism, and Tourism," in Annals of Tourism Research 25, no. 3: 760-763
19. summarizes the proceedings of the international conference "War, Terrorism and Tourism: Crisis and Recovery," held in Dubrovnik, September 15-27, 1997.
20. "Croatia: A New Welcome, An Old Friend," advertisement by the Croatian Tourist Board, in "Weekend," Guardian, February 14, 1998, p. 58.
21. See John Cunningham, "Travel Paradise Rebuilt," in "Weekend," Guardian, July 5, 1997, p. 60.
22. Bill Rolston, "Selling Tourism in a Country at War," Race and Class 37, no. 1 (1995): 24-25.
23. For another reading of the NITB's "asserting normality" strategy, see Spurgeon Thompson, "The Commodification of Culture and Decolonization in Northern Ireland," Irish Studies Review 7, no. 1 (1999): 53-63.
24. Northern Ireland Tourist Office, "The Day of the Men and Women of Peace Must Surely Come" (Belfast: NITB, 1989): 59.
25. The Day of the Men and Women of Peace Must Surely Come Ibid., p. 72.
26. Rolston, note 17, pp. 30-31.
27. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it points to important areas of tourism that require politicization; see esp. Jean Keefe and Sue Wheat, Tourism and Human Rights (London: Tourism Concern, 1998).
28. In response to various criticisms, Urry restates his claims in "The Tourist Gaze Revisited," American Behavioral Scientist 36, no. 2 (1992): 172-186.
29. David Chaney, "Metaphors of Tourism," paper presented at "Practising Places and Tourist Performances" Conference, April 6-7, 1998, Durham University.
30. Steven Spielberg recently explained an incident of tourist excess: in an ironic misinterpretation of the film Saving Private Ryan, tourists in Normandy visiting World War II tombstones asked the caretakers to direct them to the grave of Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg in an interview with Mark Cousins, BBC2 "War Stories," October 1998). The complex relations between fact, fiction, tourism, and spectacle are also apparent in another Spielberg-inspired event, the Schindler's List tour currently operating in Krakow, Poland; see Chris Rojek, "Indexing, Dragging, and the Social Construction of Tourist Sights," in John Urry and Chris Rojek, eds., Touring Cultures: Transformations in Travel and Theory (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 54-55.
31. For various definitions of "political tourism," see Russell Watson, "'Do It, Be It, Live It' - Generation Global: Young Americans Take On the World," Newsweek, October 6, 1997, p. 34; Mueller, note 5; Smith, note 1, p. 219; and Rolston, note 17, pp. 32-34.
32. Political tourism differs from other tourist fascinations with trauma such as those currently visiting Princess Diana's crash scene in Paris, sites that Rojek refers to as Black Spots. See Chris Rojek, Ways of Escape: Modern Transformations in Leisure and Travel (London: Macmillan, 1993), pp. 137-145.
33. Cunningham, note 16, p. 60.
34. Design and photography of the postcard is by Damir Fabijanic. The card is printed by Multigraf d.o.o (Dubrovnik, Croatia: Institute for the Restoration of Dubrovnik).
35. Northern Ireland Tourist Board, "The Best of Northern Ireland," reprinted in Rolston, note 17, p. 27.
36. Rolston, note 17, p. 31; Thompson, note 17, pp. 57-63.
37. Figure 4 shows the mural "Newtownards Road, Belfast, 1994." The mural reads, in part: "For as long as one hundred of us remain alive we shall never in any way consent to submit to the rule of the Irish" - plate 21 in Bill Rolston, Drawing Support 2: Murals of War and Peace (Belfast: Beyond the Pale Publications, 1995).
38. Figure 5 shows "Rossville Street, Derry 1981, 'Get the Brits Out'; Britain, with face of Margaret Thatcher, abuses Ireland" - plate 88 in Bill Rolston, Drawing Support: Murals in the North of Ireland (Belfast: Beyond the Pale Publications, 1992).
39. Rolston, note 17, p. 35.
40. Dominic O "Reilly, "Sarajevo's 'Massacre Trail' Lures Groups of War Tourists," in Globe and Mail, March 1, 1997;
41. see also Molloy's article in this issue of Alternatives, "Theatrical Release."
42. Italian tour description quoted in Thomas Keenan "Live from . . ." in Diller and Scofidio, note 9, p. 136.
43. See also Robert Young Pelton et al., Fielding's the World's Most Dangerous Places (Redondo Beach, Calif.: Fielding Worldwide, 1998).
44. Scarlett MccGwire, "Open for Business Again," Guardian, travel section, May 16, 1998, p. 14.
45. An element of horror emerges here when the souvenirs in question consist of body parts of victims (e.g., bones and ears). This is exemplified in the character named Souvenirs who collects the teeth of Japanese POWs in Jim Jones's novel The Thin Red Line (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1962);
46. see also James J. Weingartner, "Trophies of War: U.S. Troops and the Mutilation of Japanese War Dead, 1941-1945," Pacific Historical Review 61 (February 1992): 53-67.
47. The 1919 slogan is from an army recruitment ad in Collier's Weekly; the 1993 slogan is from a navy recruitment ad on television - both from Diller and Scofidio, note 9, pp. 19-20.
48. Tom Chesshyre, "Signs of Life Emerge from the Ruins," Times Weekend, November 14, 1998, p. 27.
49. Diller and Scofidio, note 9, p. 20.
50. The massive increase in security at this site prompted one official to declare, "You are in more danger visiting places like Washington DC in the United States," Tom Chesshyre, note 37, p. 27.