Overview

We live in a society that is bombarded by news of accidents, disasters and terrorist attacks. We are obsessed by the presence of death. It is commodified in newspapers, the media, entertainment and in our cultural consumption. This book explores the notion of an emergent class of “death-seekers” who consume the spectacle of the disaster, exploring spaces of mass death and suffering. Sites that are obliterated by disasters or tragic events are recycled and visually consumed by an international audience, creating a death-seekers economy. The quest for the suffering of others allows for a much deeper reinterpretation of life, and has captivated the attention of many tourists, visiting sites such as concentration camps, disasters zones, abandoned prisons, and areas hit by terrorism. This book explores the notion of the death-seekers economy, drawing on the premise that the society of risk as imagined by postmodern sociology sets the pace to a new society: thana-capitalism. The chapters dissect our fascination with other’s suffering, what this means for our own perceptions of the self, and as a tourist activity. It also explores the notion of an economy of impotence, where citizens feel the world is out of control. This compelling book will be interest to students and scholars researching dark tourism, tourist behaviour, disaster studies, cultural studies and sociology.

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9781138209268

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Reviews

Dr. Maximiliano Korstanje, an eminent tourism authority, demonstrates his intellectual talent in his new book on dark tourism. The book takes the reader through not only the history of dark tourism, or as it is technically known, Thana-Tourism, but also introduces in this ground-breaking work the concept of Thana-capitalism as an important contribution not only to tourism literature but also to the fields of economics and social-philosophy Dr. Peter Tarlow, Texas A&M University, US In this study, Korstanje skilfully elaborates on the contemporary mutations of capitalism. He explains how mass suffering is produced and consumed today, pointing out that both ends of production and consumption are industrially crafted on the basis spectatorial indifference and on mergers of tropes and practices of death and life. The book makes a thoughtful contribution to critical sociological theory Dr Rodanthi Tzanelli, University of Leeds UK

Dr. Maximiliano Korstanje, an eminent tourism authority, demonstrates his intellectual talent in his new book on dark tourism. The book takes the reader through not only the history of dark tourism, or as it is technically known, <i>Thana-Tourism</i>, but also introduces in this ground-breaking work the concept of Thana-capitalism as an important contribution not only to tourism literature but also to the fields of economics and social-philosophy <em> </em><b>Dr. Peter Tarlow, Texas A&M University, US</b></p> In this study, Korstanje skilfully elaborates on the contemporary mutations of capitalism. He explains how mass suffering is produced and consumed today, pointing out that both ends of production and consumption are industrially crafted on the basis spectatorial indifference and on mergers of tropes and practices of death and life. The book makes a thoughtful contribution to critical sociological theory <strong>Dr Rodanthi Tzanelli, University of Leeds UK</strong></p>

Author Information

Maximiliano E. Korstanje is Reader at the Department of Economics, University of Palermo, Argentina and a member of the Tourism Crisis Management Institute (University of Florida), the Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies (University of Leeds), The Forge (University of Lancaster and University of Leeds, UK) and The International Society for Philosophers, hosted in Sheffield, UK. He is Editor in Chief of The International Journal of Safety and Security in Tourism and The International Journal of Cyber Warfare and Terrorism. With more than 800 published papers and 35 books, Maximiliano E. Korstanje was nominated for five honorary doctorates for his contributions to the study of the effects of terrorism in tourism. In 2015 he became Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds, UK.

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