Holidays in the Danger Zone

"Postcards, museums, river steamers, friendly guide books, and sunbathers—Debbie Lisle shows here that each of these can be made to serve military objectives or to reinforce militarized, gendered, and racialized presumptions about this world and our alleged places in it. Holidays in the Danger Zone is sure to spark new conversations and fresh investigations."—Cynthia Enloe, author of Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics

"In this fascinating global adventure through historical archives, evocative images, and contemporary accounts of places mundane and exotic, Debbie Lisle takes us across the frontlines from tourism studies to critical war studies (and back, a few times) in order to explore the shared spaces and unexpected engagements between war and leisure."—Waleed Hazbun, author of Beaches, Ruins, Resorts: The Politics of Tourism in the Arab World

"Even to specialists, war and tourism seem to  be at opposing ends of the spectrum: war means decreased tourism, and increased tourism is the product of peace. Lisle demonstrates that this relationship is much more complex than commonly accepted."—CHOICE

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.

Debbie Lisle is a reader in international relations in the School of Politics, International Studies, and Philosophy at Queen’s University Belfast. Her books include The Global Politics of Contemporary Travel Writing.

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