Touristic disaster: Spectacle and recovery in Post-Katrina New Orleans

This paper develops the concept touristic disaster as a heuristic device to examine the conflictual and contradictory aspects of showcasing disaster-devastated neighborhoods as tourist attractions. Touristic disaster refers to the application of tourism modes of staging, visualization, and discourse to reenchant the money making deterrents (stigma) of “destruction” and “ruin” and re-signify disaster to indicate “recovery” and “rebirth.” This...