- Title
- First World War cemeteries : Insights from visitor books
- Creator
- Winter, Caroline
- Date
- 2011
- Type
- Text; Journal article
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/33198
- Identifier
- vital:4664
- Identifier
-
https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2011.575075
- Identifier
- ISSN:1461-6688
- Abstract
- This study concerns some of the military cemeteries that were built in Belgium and France by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission following the First World War of 1914-18. The cemeteries articulate one of the main social memories of the war to remember the dead individually. The performance of tourists and pilgrims in their visits to the cemeteries can be seen as ritual behaviour which helps to perpetuate the memories. The visitor books in 39 cemeteries were examined in order to identify reasons for visitation and patterns across sites. Three clusters were formed using the percentage of visitor book entries in which visitors made reference to specific graves. Half of the cemeteries formed into a cluster which had high visitation but where less than five percent of visitor book entries referred to particular graves.Most of these cemeteries were located close to well-known sites, battlefields or national memorials. A small cluster of seven cemeteries showed relatively low visitation but up to sixty percent of visitors sought a particular grave. The data indicated that relationships between national identity and particular cemeteries were important. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.
- Relation
- Tourism Geographies Vol. 13, no. 3 (2011), p. 462-479
- Rights
- Copyright Taylor & Francis
- Rights
- This metadata is freely available under a CCO license
- Subject
- 2202 History and Philosophy Of Specific Fields; 1604 Human Geography; 1506 Tourism; Cemeteries; First World War; Performance; Social memory; Thanatourism; Visitor books; Cemetery; Cultural tradition; Heritage tourism; Memory; Tourist destination; Belgium; France
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