In the light of high incidences of diagnosed mental disorders and the growing utilization of mental healthcare services, a progressing psychiatrization of society has been hypothesized as the underlying dynamic of these developments. It also provides examples of tourist practices which, despite their local scope, have a strong potential impact on collective and social levels, as well as on business and multiple fields of study, research and education. This collection reflects on how tourism managers, researchers, academics, policy makers and local communities can mobilize, transition and adapt to cultural tourism fluctuations, as well as mitigate the negative impacts of global crises. Illustrating the multidisciplinary potential of dark tourism studies, the contributors come from different fields of study, including historiography, literary studies, sociology. Thus, all the chapters explore the ideological readings that may turn dark sites into places of dissonant heritage, and therefore make them meaningful elements in the formation of collective identities. This book seeks to offer a collection of relevant essays dealing with different aspects of dark tourism sites in the Iberian Peninsula, delving into issues related to shared attitudes in the face of death and suffering. Moreover, the author proposes that what is currently happening in contemporary Western society can be interpreted as an expression of a “partial re-reversal” of “forbidden death” to some of the characteristic features of previous historical death mentalities, which-coupled with contemporary scientific and technological possibilities-creates several paradoxical tendencies making death linger uneasily between liberation and denial as well as between autonomy and control.ĭark Heritage Tourism in the Iberian Peninsula: Memories of Tragedy and Death Whereas Ariès ended his history-writing with modern “forbidden death,” the author suggests that contemporary death mentality in Western society rather be labelled “spectacular death” in which death, dying and mourning have increasingly become spectacles. The article first outlines Ariès’s position starting out with the medieval “tamed death,” then moves on to point to several inherent limitations in his history-writing, before suggesting a revision and update of it.

This article revisits, reviews and revises the much cited and magisterial description of successive historical death mentalities from the Middle Ages to modern society as proposed several decades ago by French historian Philippe Ariès.

Człowiek i śmierć by Philippe Ariès