The contribution of dark tourism to place identity in Northern Ireland

According to Henderson (2007), tangible and intangible heritage reflects peoples’ identities and representations of this can, in turn, influence how people see them-selves and their country. Nation-states are very selective with regard to what cul-tural heritage resources to develop and promote as not only are they pivotal to the formation and maintenance of a national identity for the domestic visitors, but they also influence how destinations are seen by ‘Others’ (Lanfant 1995; Wood 1984). However, while states may encourage the development of certain types of cultural heritage resources and forms of tourism that enable them to present themselves to the wider world on their terms, they cannot exercise complete control over this activity. As a consequence, a state may be represented in a way that it would not choose. This, in turn, may generate forms of tourism demand that a state would not seek to encourage. Such a situation may be considered as unwelcome or even unacceptable by the host community and may compromise the political and cul- tural identity that it wishes to present to the wider world (Burns 2005; Morgan and Pritchard 1998). Sometimes, in fact, the physical remains of the past offer up an identity that many of those in the present wish to distance themselves from, even while, at the same time, recognizing it as part of their history. This is the dilemma of ‘undesirable’ heritage (Macdonald 2006), also referred to as ‘atrocity heritage’ (Ashworth 2002), ‘dissonant heritage’ (Tunbridge and Ashworth 1996), ‘conflict heritage’ (McDowell 2008) and ʼnegative heritage’ (Meskell 2002). In some cases dark tourism can be considered as an example of this type of heritage.