The moral gaze in commercialized dark tourism

Shengrong Chen and Honggang Xu

Current Issues in Tourism, 2021, vol. 24, issue 15, 2167-2186

Abstract: The moral issues related to dark tourism, which commercializes death and disaster, have aroused heated academic debate. This paper adopts an analytical framework that explores the moral gaze of tourists in the context of commercialized dark tourism in the time and space dimensions. The findings show that different orientations to the past or present (in the time dimension) and different understandings of dark sites and dark places (in the space dimension) bring about various moral conflicts for tourists. Four types of moral gaze are identified: the critical gaze, tolerant gaze, supportive gaze, and sympathetic gaze. This paper makes a theoretical contribution to the study of the morality of dark tourism and promotes the understanding of the relationships between dark tourism and post-disaster reconstruction. Managerial implications are discussed with regard to how to reconcile moral conflicts for the sustainability of dark tourism.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13683500.2020.1828309 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rcitxx:v:24:y:2021:i:15:p:2167-2186

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rcit20

DOI: 10.1080/13683500.2020.1828309

Access Statistics for this article

Current Issues in Tourism is currently edited by Jennifer Tunstall

More articles in Current Issues in Tourism from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().