Holidays in the Danger Zone

Entanglements of War and Tourism

Debbie Lisle

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781452953335
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Colonialism & Post-Colonialism
• Index: Social Sciences

Holidays in the Danger Zone exposes the mundane and everyday interactions between two seemingly opposed worlds: warfare and tourism. Debbie Lisle shows how a tourist sensibility shapes the behavior of soldiers in war—especially the experiences of Western military forces in “exotic” settings. This includes not only R&R but also how battlefields become landscapes of leisure and tourism. She further explores how a military sensibility shapes the development of tourism in the postwar context, from “Dark Tourism” (engaging with displays of conflict and atrocity) to exhibitions of conflict in museums and at memorial sites, as well as advertising, film, journals, guidebooks, blogs, and photography. 

Focused on how war and tourism reinforce prevailing modes of domination, Holidays in the Danger Zone critically examines the long historical arc of the war–tourism nexus—from nineteenth-century imperialism to World War I and World War II, from the Cold War to globalization and the War on Terror.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction: Entanglements of War and Tourism
• 1. The Double Vision of Empire: The Gordon Relief Campaign, 1884–85
• 2. Tours of Duty, Tours of Pleasure: Battlefield Journeys and the Rise of Militourism, 1914–45
• 3. Bipolar Travels: Tourism and Conflict at the Edges of the Cold War
• 4. Global Interventions: Contested History and the Rise of Dark Tourism
• 5. Connecting Tourism and Terrorism: Milblogs, Soft Targets, and the Securitization of Travel
• Conclusion. Touring Otherwise: The Ethical Possibilities of Entanglement
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index