“Smile for the camera”: Online warehouse tours as a form of dark tourism within the era of late capitalism

Abstract

Over the past 50 years dark tourism has also seen exponential growth in terms of both physical and digital contexts. Dark tourism is primarily a concentration around documented accounts of physical violence, and theorisations centred on dark tourism studies have generally fallen within either behavioural or interpretivist perspectives. Such perspectives are indicative of the continually evolving nature of dark tourism and its receptiveness to new definitions, conceptual frameworks, and theorisations. Taking this into consideration, this concept paper seeks to develop and broaden the notion of “dark tourism” within the era of late capitalism by presenting a content analysis of Amazon’s virtual warehouse tour. In drawing upon critical notions of violence and the emerging deviant leisure framework, this paper will aim to instigate fresh academic enquiry into the nature of dark tourism, expand its theoretical underpinnings, and subsequently provide a means in which to examine how banal forms of tourism play an integral part in the proliferation of some of the most serious harms that populate the contemporary neoliberal landscape. Within this fresh interpretation of dark tourism, this paper also examines the relationship between the Internet, technology and late-stage capitalism, and the implications that this has in studying how corporations use such forms of media in tourism production in order to downplay and obfuscate the realities behind their activities.

A Bibliometric Analysis and Systematic Review of Dark Tourism: Trends, Impact, and Prospects

“…In general, dark tourism offers visitors the opportunity to interact with historical events and places that have provided a unique perspective on the past and its impact on the present (Lushchyk and Mamchur 2022). Thus, the study of dark tourism is framed within behavioural and interpretive perspectives, evolving as new definitions, conceptual frameworks, and theories that emerge (Lynes and Wragg 2023). In this way, dark tourism has gained attention in recent years, with academic studies exploring its definitions, impacts, and subcategories (Kleshcheva 2021;Zheng et al 2020), such as Holocaust tourism and slavery heritage tourism (Miles 2015).…”