The dark tourism discipline: a creative brand in a competitive academic environment?

This paper emerged from a PhD research project which investigated motivations to tour dark tourism sites, particularly those in South Africa as well as internationally. Like previous studies, the theory that fascination with something ‘dark’ in tourism, underpinned that research project. Literature showed that the ‘dark’ valance of dark tourism evolved from ancient morbid spectacles such as public gladiatorial contests, public executions, guided tours of morgues and early Christian pilgrimages. Thus, when the ‘dark tourism’ discipline emerged (1990s), it was based on the theory of fascination with suffering. However, the results of the motivations to engage in dark tourism study showed that the desire to learn and to pay homage to victims of past atrocities motivated these tours. This refuted the original theory. Thus, follow-up excavation led to the conclusion that neoliberalism was at the bottom of the dark tourism discipline. When neoliberalism became a dominant economic organizing system (1980s), it presented fertile ground for the dark tourism discipline to take root in higher education. Owing to neoliberalism, during the 1990s, higher education institutions experienced state funding cuts, this compelled them to be entrepreneurial to survive. The dark tourism scholarship, consequently, emerged as part of corporatization of higher education.