Title: The darkest spectrum of Republica de Cromañón, Argentina: an auto-ethnography on a post-disaster (traumatic) site

Authors: Maximiliano E. Korstanje

Addresses: Department of Economics, University of Palermo, Buenos Aires, 1414, Argentina

Abstract: The turn of the century has brought many dangerous and unseen risks for the tourist system. The methodological limitation of risk perception theory to make safer destinations has led towards a new paradigm where risk-management the pace to post-disaster consumption. The precautionary logic, which plays a leading role in the risk perception paradigm, is replaced by a type of morbid consumption (ipso facto) where adaptation is vital. Having said this, post-disaster tourism flourishes in a moment where the tourism industry -if not tourism epistemology- seems to be in crisis. The present paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of current post-disaster tourism research to unpack the proper experiences and information recollected during my own ethnographies in Republica de Cromañón, Buenos Aires, Argentina. This manmade disaster, which took 194 lives, offers a fertile ground to understand the importance of qualitative-related methods to complement the specialised literature.

Keywords: dark tourism; post disaster tourism; death; gazing; anthropology; Republica de Cromañón.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTA.2020.113924

International Journal of Tourism Anthropology, 2020 Vol.8 No.1, pp.44 - 59

Received: 10 Aug 2020
Accepted: 03 Sep 2020
Published online: 01 Apr 2021 *

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