Famine Tourism as a subset of Heritage and Dark Tourism may be defined as:
"Tourism that concerns itself with sites of death and remembrance associated with mass famine and the mass emigration that follows.”
Irish Famine Tourism may be defined as:
"Tourism that is undertaken by the direct descendants and diaspora of the victims of the Great Irish Famine of 1845-1852, and other famines in Ireland, under British colonial rule.”
Every corner of Ireland has Dark Tourism sites, from the Black Taxi Tours that explain the Peace Wall in Belfast, to Spike Island prison in Cork. In Ireland, we respect both life and death and we cherish a good ghost story and a good funeral equally.
Some of our most visited heritage sites present as the lighter or educational shade of Dark Tourism such as the Titanic Museum in Belfast, and the Famine gallery at the EPIC Irish emigration museum in Dublin. With seventy million Irish diaspora it is no stretch of the imagination to see that the Great Irish Famine that was the cause of the emigration of their ancestors, might just as easily be a motivation behind their visit to the “old country”, Ireland. However, there are also symbolic memorial sites and actual sites of human remains, which may be considered the evidence of ethnic cleansing or genocide. Therefore, we must be respectful of these types of sites and accord them a certain gravitas.
This potential Famine Tourism is the subject of my dissertation which I will be delighted to share with you in 2020.
Lynda Murphy,
Tourism Marketing,
Technological University Dublin, Ireland.
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