Penal tourism and a tale of four cities: Reflecting on the museum effect in London, Sydney, Melbourne, and Buenos Aires

Abstract

The resurrection of former prisons as museums has caught the attention of tourists along with scholars interested in studying penal tourism. This work expands on previous research on prison museums in Buenos Aires, Melbourne, and Sydney to include London. The analysis advances a cultural sociology of punishment by throwing critical light on three thematic couplings: prisons/ economics; religion/governance; and pain/penal progress. While reflecting on those unifying subjects, the discussion addresses the manner by which prison museums tell a historical tale about their host city with respect to punishment and social control. Observations and interpretations are situated within a growing literature on museum studies, penal spectatorship, and dark tourism.

Dark and literary: A tour to the Isle of the Dead

“…It marked the beginning of an educational experience that I would probably not have undergone if I had not been intrigued by what I saw and felt on site. This is in line with Welch's (2013) idea that "a defining characteristic of prison museums is their sited-ness. Such sites become a major draw card for tourists because the prison and its pedagogy are viewed as authentic" (p. 483).…”

Iconic Power, Dark Tourism, and the Spectacle of Suffering

“…Although images are often integral to the prison tourist experience they need to be situated in an understanding of what has been called the 'museum effect' (Casey, 2003, Williams, 2007. As Michael Welch (2013Welch ( , 2015 notes in his account of penal tourism, this effect is produced by the complex interplay of objects, images and space. Crucially, it is achieved through a form of '"organized walking" in which an intended message is communicated in the form of a (more or less) directed itinerary' (Bennett, 1995: 6).…”

Making Punishment Memorialization Pay? Marketing, Networks, and Souvenirs at Small Penal History Museums in Canada

“…A significant portion of the literature on prison museums has explored larger and more renowned decommissioned carceral sites that now operate as penal history sites. Among them are studies on Alcatraz off the shores of San Francisco (e.g., Strange & Kempa, 2003), Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia (e.g., M. Brown, 2009;Bruggeman, 2012), Robben Island near Cape Town (e.g., Shackley, 2001;Shearing & Kempa, 2004), and The Clink in London (Welch, 2013). This research examines the meanings of incarceration and penality communicated to visitors, and how museum staff preserve heritage in these milieus.…”

“…While penal history museums are attracting more scholarly attention, most studies focus on the meanings of penality communicated to visitors in Australian (e.g., Wilson, 2008Wilson, , 2011, South African (e.g., Shearing & Kempa, 2004), American (e.g., Welch, 2012Welch, , 2013, and British museums. Sociological and historical research (e.g., Morin, 2013;Strange & Kempa, 2003;Welch, 2013;Wilson, 2011) has contributed to understandings of these "dark tourism" destinations, which are associated with death and the macabre (Stone & Sharpley, 2008). The representations of confinement found in these heritage museums are part of the spectacle of punishment (M. Brown, 2009) composed of visions of threatening and criminalized others that are consumed by the public (Wilson, 2008).…”