Hope in the dark: geographies of volunteer and dark tourism in Cambodia

Cultural Geographies

Volumn 21, Issue 4, 2014, Pages 681-694

  Koleth, Maria ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY   (Australia)

Author keywords

Cambodia; dark tourism; hope; materiality; monstrosity; volunteer tourism

Indexed keywords

HERITAGE TOURISM; HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE; MATERIAL CULTURE; TOURISM DEVELOPMENT; TOURIST DESTINATION; VIOLENCE; VOLUNTARY APPROACH;

CAMBODIA;

EID: 84908510802     PISSN: 14744740     EISSN: 14770881     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1474474013519577     Document Type: Article

References (62)

1. See S. Wearing, Volunteer Tourism: Experiences that Make a Difference (Wallingford: CABI International, 2001).
2. J. Lennon and M. Foley, Dark Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster (London: Cengage Learning EMEA, 2000).
3. C. Etcheson, After the Killing Fields: Lessons from the Cambodian Genocide (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2005), p. 119
4. J. Tyner, The Killing of Cambodia: Geography, Genocide and the Unmaking of Space, (Aldershot, Burlington: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 167-173.
5. B. Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Communism in Cambodia, 1930-1975, (New Haven & London, Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 47-67.
6. Rachel Hughes, ‘Dutiful Tourism: Encountering the Cambodian Genocide’, Asia- Pacific Viewpoint 49(3), 2008, p. 321;
7. T. Winter, ‘When Ancient Glory Meets Modern Tragedy: Angkor and the Khmer Rouge in Contemporary Tourism’ in L.C. Ollier and T. Winter (eds), Expressions of Cambodia: The politics of tradition, identity and change, (London, NY: Routledge, 2006) p. 43.
8. Hughes, ‘Dutiful tourism’, p. 325.
9. Hughes, ‘Dutiful tourism’, p. 327.
10. B. Anderson, ‘On becoming and being hopeful: towards a theory of affect’, Environment and Planning D, 24(5), 2006, pp. 733-752;
11. B. Anderson, ‘“Transcending without Transcendence”: Utopianism and an Ethos of Hope’, Antipode, 38(4), 2006, pp. 691-710;
12. B. Anderson and J. Wylie ‘On geography and materiality’, Environment and Planning A, 41(2), 2009, pp. 318-335;
13. P. Cloke and J. D. Dewsbury, ‘Spiritual Landscapes: existence, performance and immanence’, 10(6), 2009, pp. 695-711;
14. P. Cloke, ‘Emerging Geographies of Evil? Theo-ethics and postsecular possibilities’, 18(4), 2011, pp. 475-493;
15. J. Holloway, ‘Enchanted Spaces, The Séance, Affect and Geographies of Religion’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 96(1), 2006, pp. 182-187.
16. D. Harvey, Spaces of Hope, (Berkeley and LA, University of California Press, 2000) for an earlier consideration of the necessity of hoping and imagining alternatives in a global space structured by free-market triumphalism as well as the capacity of spaces of utopic construction within economically depressed sites to destroy as well as inspire. Harvey’s text provides a spatial analysis of hope, albeit within a revitalised historical materialism rather than a re-valued materiality.
17. D. Dixon and S. Ruddick, ‘Introduction: monstrous irruptions’, Cultural geographies, 18(4), 2011, p.432.
18. For an earlier utilization of a mirror box see Trinh T. Minh-ha, Women Native Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), pp. 36-44. Trinh’s mirror box is constructed on different terms and is used to symbolize the endless play of representations. While Trinh’s concerns with the triple bind facing writers who are women of colour centre on a formidable critique of the privilege of being able to represent others’ experiences within a white, male hegemony, the critique of representation always already implicates an understanding of materiality. As Trinh explicates, writing as a woman of colour involves negotiating with the excess of a marginalized, bodily existence, one which inhabits a middle ground between words and flesh.
19. M. Mostafanezhad, ‘The Geography of Compassion in Volunteer Tourism’, Tourism Geographies, 15(2), pp. 328-331;
20. K. Simpson, ‘“Doing Development”: the gap year, volunteer tourists and a popular practice of development’, Journal of International Development, 16 (5). 2004 p.686.
21. A. Coghlan and D. Fennell, ‘Myth or substance: An examination of altruism as the basis of volunteer tourism’, Annals of Leisure Research 12 (3-4), 2009, pp. 377-402, for an analysis of the ambivalence of volunteers’ altruism in the Third World.
22. D.A. Guttentag, ‘The Possible Negative Impacts of Volunteer Tourism’, International Journal of Tourism Research, 11 (6), 2009. pp. 537-540.
23. S. Frohlick, ‘Negotiating the public secrecy of sex in a transnational tourist town in Carribean Costa Rica’, Tourist Studies, 8 (1), 2008, pp. 22-23, for reference to the exploitative overlap of volunteer and adventure tourism with sex tourism in the Caribbean.
24. W. Vrasti, Volunteer Tourism in the Global South: Giving Back in Neoliberal Times (Abingdon, New York: Routledge, 2013), for further work on the context of volunteer tourism within an exploitative, neoliberal economy.
25. T. Seaton, ‘Thanatourism and its Discontents: An appraisal of a decade’s work with some future issues and directions’, in T. Jamal and M. Robinson (eds), Sage Handbook of Tourism Studies, (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington: Sage, 2009), pp. 522-535;
26. P. Stone and R. Sharpley, ‘Consuming Dark Tourism: A Thanatalogical Perspective’, Annals of Tourism Research 35(2), 2008, pp. 574-590.
27. A. Biran, Y. Poria and G. Oren, ‘Sought Experiences at (Dark) Heritage Sites, Annals of Tourism Research 38(3), 2011, pp. 824-825;
28. Seaton, ‘Thanatourism and its Discontents’, p.523.
29. W. Deu, D. Litteljohn and J. Lennon, ‘Place Identity or Place Identities: The Memorial to the Victims of the Nanjing Massacre, China’ in L. White and E. Frew (eds.), Dark Tourism and Place Identity: Managing and Interpreting Dark Places (Abingdon, New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 46-59, for a case study of the contested differences in experiences and motivations for visitors to dark tourism sites.
30. M. S. Bowman and P. C. Pezzulo, ‘What is so “Dark” about “Dark Tourism”: Death tours and perfor-mance’, Tourist Studies 9(3), 2009, p.190.
31. S. Heder, ‘Cambodia in 2010’, Asian Survey, 51(1), 2011, pp. 208-14;
32. K. Un, ‘Cambodia in 2011: A Thin Veneer of Change’, Asian Survey, 52(1), 2012, pp. 202-9;
33. K. Un, ‘Cambodia in 2012 - Beyond the Crossroads?’, Asian Survey, 53(1), 2013, pp. 142-9.
34. V. Cheang, ‘The Political Economy of Tourism in Cambodia’, Asia- Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, 13(3), 2008, p. 287.
35. T.D. Wood, ‘Touring Memories of the Khmer Rouge’, in L.C. Ollier and T. Winter (eds), Expressions of Cambodia: The Politics of Tradition, Identity and Change (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 190-1.
36. Etcheson, After the Killing Fields, p. 114.
37. Anderson, ‘Transcending without Transcendence’, p. 705.
38. Anderson, ‘On Becoming and Being Hopeful’, p. 743.
39. Anderson, ‘Transcending without Transcendence’, p. 703.
40. Anderson, ‘Transcending without Transcendence’, p. 705.
41. A. Dinerstein and S. Deneulin, ‘Hope Movements: Naming Mobilization in a Post-development World’, Development and Change, 43(2), 2012, pp. 585-602.
42. Dinerstein and Deneulin, ‘Hope Movements’, p. 598.
43. Dinerstein and Deneulin, ‘Hope Movements’, p. 594.
44. Dinerstein and Deneulin, ‘Hope Movements’, pp. 590-4.
45. Dixon and Ruddick, ‘Introduction: Monstrous Irruptions’, p. 432.
46. Dixon and Ruddick, ‘Introduction: Monstrous Irruptions’, p. 433.
47. Cloke, ‘Emerging Geographies of Evil’, pp. 482-8.
48. The names of all volunteers in this study have been changed to preserve their anonymity.
49. L. Anderson, ‘Analytic Autoethnography’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35(4), 2006, p. 375.
50. J. Lea, ‘Post-Phenomenology/ Post-phenomenological Geographies’, in R. Kitchin and N. Thrift (eds), The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2009), p. 374.
51. Anderson, ‘Transcending without Transcendence’, p. 705.
52. A. Charlesworth, ‘Hello Darkness - Envoi and Caveat’, Common Knowledge, 9(3), p. 515, for an exploration of the importance of physical experiences of sickness and suffocation within dark tourism to the sites of the Holocaust, as well as how the mundane continuance of the walls and mortar in dark tourism sites can bear testament to victims’ suffering.
53. Hughes, ‘Dutiful Tourism’, p. 323.
54. Anderson and Wylie, ‘On Geography’, p. 319.
55. Anderson and Wylie, ‘On Geography’, pp. 318-35.
56. Anderson, ‘Transcending without Transcendence’, p. 705.
57. Anderson, ‘On Becoming and Being Hopeful’, pp. 733-52;
58. Anderson, ‘Transcending without Transcendence’, pp. 691-710;
59. Dinerstein and Deneulin, ‘Hope Movements’, pp. 585-602.
60. Heder, ‘Cambodia in 2010’, pp. 208-14;
61. Un, ‘Cambodia in 2011’, pp. 202-9;
62. Un, ‘Cambodia in 2012’, pp. 142-9.