Selective interpretation and eclectic human heritage in Lithuania

Dark touristic perception: Motivation, experience and benefits interpreted from the visit to seismic memorial sites in Sichuan province

“…In the tourism literature, dark tourism has generated a significant amount of research interests from both supplying and consuming perspectives (Stone and Sharpley 2008;Wight and Lennon 2007;Sharpley and Stone 2009). The supply side of dark tourism and its related management and interpretation dominates the earliest debate about how death and the dead are packaged up and consumed within the modern visitor economy (Podoshen 2013).…”

“…As a key theme in successful interpretation of dark tourism experience, authenticity is accompanied by a degree of satisfaction and enlightenment (Wight and Lennon 2007). For example, a satisfactory visit undertaken by pilgrimages to the Holy Land in Mediterranean can offer authentic experiences, whereas the interpretation of non-believing visitors became merely a recreational, commercial and nationalistic experience (Belhassen et al 2008).…”

Warfare tourism: an opportunity for Croatia?

“…Seaton (1996) distinguishes two authentic groups directly linked to war: sites of individual or mass deaths, and memorials or internment sites; in this context Stone (2010) typifies dark conflict sites and dark camps of genocide. Henderson (2000), Siegenthaler (2002), Wight & Lennon (2007), Goulding & Domic (2009) and Stone (2010) highlight that the interpretation of war-related sites is a sensitive issue. In this context, Naef (2013a) and Baillie (2012) problematise Croatia's monopolisation of memory in the case of Vukovar.…”

“…Many of these authentic sites have distinct conservational, educational and commemorative meaning, which must engender a degree of empathy between the visitor and the (past) victim (Henderson 2000, Hertzog, 2012Kidron, 2013;Miles, 2002;Robb, 2009). Minić (2012), Seaton & Lennon (2004), Wight & Lennon (2007), Walter (2009), Biran et al (2011, Lee, Bendle, Yoon & Kim (2012), Ozer, Ersoy, and Tuzunkan (2012) and Stone (2012), in this sense, argue that dark tourism is only the culture's subtype and part of heritage or its special form of expression.…”

“…Moreover, this destination has important implications for the construction of nationhood and notions of mythmaking for Australians and New Zealanders, where many of them are not interested in death itself (Slade, 2003) or for systemic and unrelenting militarisation of Australian history and culture, especially in relation to the youth (McKay, 2013). Hence, warfare destinations could also create negative/wrong international imaginary equating the place with arms and bloodshed; Wight and Lennon (2007) cite Lithuania as a destination with a dark heritage of invasion, genocide, and repression. If we turn to the World War Two-related sites across the world, Siegenthaler (2002) in his research of tourist guidebook presentations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki discovered the denial of the war's memory, meaning the containment of national war memories, ambivalence and the decentring of historical perspective.…”