6533b853fe1ef96bd12acaec

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Dark Tourism Tribes: Social Capital as a Variable

subject

description

There is a recent morbid tendency to consume (gaze) sites of mass death, mourning and suffering. This tendency was baptized in different forms such as dark tourism, thana-tourism or mourning tourism to name only a few. To date, no matter the multiplication of theories and studies, two great tendencies coexist. On one hand, some voices allude to the dark tourism as a mechanism of reisilience which helps community to recover after a disaster takes hit. The other signals to the pedagogical functions of dark tourism as a fertile ground to develop empathy with the Other’s pain. The present chapter reviews the strengths and weaknesses of both position with strong focus on the cultures of neo-tribes. Based on the previous publications on Maffesoli, as well as the theory of social capital, we lay the foundations towards a new understanding of dark tourism which is helpful not only for academicians but by practitioners and policy-makers.