Holidays in the Danger Zone: Entanglements of War and Tourism

by Debbie Lisle

Holidays in the Danger Zone exposes the mundane and everyday interactions between two seemingly opposed 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.

392 pages, Paperback

Published July 15, 2016

Reviews

[Stephanie McGarrah]

I had to put this down before I was 50 pages in. "Entanglements" in the title should have tipped me off to the fact that this was going to be laden with graduate student jargon. I feel like a broken record talking about this, but (and perhaps this is because I tend to read a lot of non-fiction), I see this all the time. We get it, you read a ton of Foucault! I also see lots of academic work that was beautifully written, detailed and provocative, hence my attraction towards non-fiction. Here the sentences quickly started to meld together and put me to sleep.

I'm not suggesting that books be dumbed down for people. On the contrary, books should challenge you and leave things open to interpretation: this book does neither. There is probably something to be had here, its an interesting topic, but the way it is written makes it very uninteresting.