Donald Light
Biographic Data
| ID | 156289 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Donald Light |
| GIVEN NAMES | Donald |
| FAMILY NAME | Light |
| SIGNATURE | LIGHT D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Bournemouth University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8069-8597 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 81 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 839 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 81 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1971 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 17 |
On the slow train
This paper examines slow mobility and deceleration in the context of tourism. It focuses on a heritage railway in Romania, which travels through mountainous scenery at an average speed of 17 km/hour. Using methods from mobile ethnography and go-along interviews it explores passengers’ experiences of travelling slowly. Passengers did not appear to be deliberately participating in slow travel as an act of countercultural opposition to the prevailin…
Souvenir practices of domestic tourists
Although souvenirs have received considerable academic attention, their role and significance for domestic tourists are less researched. This paper focuses on the souvenir-purchasing practices of domestic tourists, and the post-holiday role of their souvenirs. Interviews were undertaken with 49 tourists in Romania at the point of souvenir purchase, and 12 follow-up interviews were conducted to explore the role of their souvenirs after the holiday…
Living the story
Museums offer rich cultural and heritage experiences, yet little research exists on why visitors are drawn to author-inspired museums – an emergent museum type in Norway. Grounded in the literature domains of cultural heritage and museum tourism, this study explores the co-utility of perceived authenticity and visitor motivation in explaining visitor behavior. It focuses on two prominent Norwegian author-inspired museums – the Ibsen Museum and Ha…
Trigger events, moments, and destination evolution in a post-socialist context
Positive experiences of visually impaired tourists
There is an emerging body of research that focuses on the experiences of tourists with visual impairment. This has established that such tourists face many barriers, difficulties and challenges, predominantly relating to the design of the physical environments of tourism or the attitudes of employees. However, the issue of positive and high-quality experiences among visually-impaired tourists has been neglected. To advance the debate, this paper …
Post-holiday memory work
While souvenirs have generated considerable interest within tourism research, less attention has been paid to their post-holiday ‘afterlife’. Utilising perspectives from memory research and more-than-representational theory, this paper focuses on interactions with a ubiquitous souvenir: the fridge magnet. Drawing on semi-structured interviews we illustrate how, because of their embeddedness within everyday domestic rhythms, magnets are active age…
The disposal of cremation ashes in tourism settings
Although research into the relationship between tourism and death has predominantly focused on dark tourism, tourism scholars are exploring other forms of association between the two. In this context, this paper focuses on a little-researched practice in tourism studies: the scattering of cremation ashes in spaces used for tourism and leisure. This is not a universal practice, and it may only be commonplace in countries with permissive legislatio…
The neglected heritage of the English seaside holiday
This paper focuses on the neglect of the heritage of the seaside holiday in England. Many seaside towns feature an idiosyncratic architecture dedicated to entertainment and pleasure which, until recently, was rarely considered in terms of heritage. The paper examines why this heritage has long been neglected, arguing that seaside architecture – associated with fun and entertainment among predominantly working-class tourists – was misaligned with …
Transitional justice and the political ‘work’ of domestic tourism
The relationship between tourism and transitional justice is little-researched. This paper explores the importance of domestic tourism for enabling citizens to encounter and engage with wider transitional justice projects. This issue is explored with reference to a memorial museum in Romania which interprets political violence and state repression. Semi-structured interviews with 52 domestic tourists were undertaken (using purposive sampling to s…
Museums and Transitional Justice
Memorial museums are frequently established within transitional justice projects intended to reckon with recent political violence. They play an important role in enabling young people to understand and remember a period of human rights abuses of which they have no direct experience. This paper examines the impact of a memorial museum in Romania which interprets the human rights abuses of the communist period (1947–1989). It uses focus groups wit…
Exploring bad faith in tourism
Introduction
This special edition examines various aspects of urban tourism in the post-communist cities of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It begins by examining the nature of tourism restructuring in the region since the end of communism and the way that this unfolds in cities. It then examines major global changes in the nature of tourism and their impacts on urban tourism in CEE. These include the growing demand among tourists for new experiences and de…
Heritage attractions, competitive pressures and adaptation
Heritage visitor attractions operate in a dynamic environment requiring them to respond to changing circumstances which they cannot control. This paper focuses on adaptation strategies adopted by one type of heritage resource: the seaside pier in the UK. As part of the heritage of mass tourism itself, piers were created in a specific context and, as that context has changed, they have needed to adapt to remain viable as attractions. A combination…
Covid-19 in Romania
COVID-19 has played out in Romania in a similar way to that in many other European countries. The government implemented decisive early measures which were able to keep the infection and mortality rates relatively low. This paper considers three distinctive aspects of the situation in Romania. First, the situation was complicated by the influence of transnational migrant workers, large numbers of whom returned to Romania when the pandemic started…
Dwelling-mobility
Education and post-communist transitional justice
This paper examines the role of education within post-communist transitional justice. It focuses on the ways in which young Romanians negotiate the communist past during an educational visit to a memorial museum. The museum enabled these visitors to better understand the repression of the communist era and had limited impact in changing their attitudes towards communism, but it did provoke reflection upon and comparison between the present and th…
Naming rights, place branding, and the tumultuous cultural landscapes of neoliberal urbanism
In recent decades, urban policymakers have increasingly embraced the selling of naming rights as a means of generating revenue to construct and maintain urban infrastructure. This practice of “toponymic commodification” first emerged with the commercialization of professional sports during the second half of the 20th century and has become an integral part of the policy toolkit of neoliberal urbanism more generally. As a result, the naming of eve…
Encountering the victims of Romanian communism
Many states in post-communist East-Central Europe have established memorial museums which aim to tell the story of suffering under the communist regime. They also seek to encourage visitors to develop empathy for the victims of communist repression. This paper explores the responses of a group of young people to a memorial museum in Romania (Sighet Memorial Museum), focusing on how these visitors experienced empathy for the victims of communist-e…
Flags, society and space
This paper proposes that flags are an important but under‐theorised aspect of geographical inquiry and seeks to outline a new field of “vexillgeography,” which critically embraces the spatiality and performativity of flags. We start by outlining the potential of semiotics (and geosemiotics) to further our understanding of flags, focusing on iconic, indexical and symbolic modes of representation in relation to flag design and the marking of territ…
The politics of toponymic continuity
This chapter focuses on renaming streets and urban landmarks in the wake of political change have tended to neglect the issue of continuity in the toponymic landscape. The renaming of streets following political change might appear to be uncomplicated since the incoming order will usually have control of the necessary administrative and bureaucratic apparatus. The limits to state power and the resulting lack of comprehensive renaming are also evi…
The corpse, heritage, and tourism
In this chapter, the authors explore the discovery, treatment, and reinterment of Richard III's body and its role in heritage tourism as a series of inter-connected enactments in which the shift from the absence of the corpse to its presence is central. Sometimes the body of Richard III is a subject, given meaning and appropriated for a variety of ends, but it also demonstrates agency. The authors focus on five interlocking ontologies which they …
It’s not that we like death or anything’
This paper explores motives for visiting a lightest dark (heritage) tourism attraction. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 24 visitors to the London Dungeon. Few visitors reported an interest in death, suffering or the macabre as important in their decision to visit, a finding which accords with research at a range of other types of darker places. Instead, most people visited from general or incidental reasons that were unrelated to …
Progress in dark tourism and thanatourism research
This paper reviews academic research into dark tourism and thanatourism over the 1996–2016 period. The aims of this paper are threefold. First, it reviews the evolution of the concepts of dark tourism and thanatourism, highlighting similarities and differences between them. Second it evaluates progress in 6 key themes and debates. These are: issues of the definition and scope of the concepts; ethical issues associated with such forms of tourism; …
Immigrant access in the Affordable Care Act
During its first five years, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) built upon previous categorical distinctions among immigrants to solidify some inequalities and partially redress others. To analyse these changes, we build upon Tilly’s theory of durable inequalities by adding the concepts of redress and retrenchment, reflecting the dynamics of change among countervailing powers in a policy field. We employ this theoretical framework to investigate the w…
Working with the carnivalesque at the seaside
To date, consideration of the carnivalesque at the seaside has focussed on the practices and behaviour of tourists. Less attention has been paid to tourism employees who are not participants in the carnival but may nevertheless be affected by the ‘playful crowd’ that they work with. This study focuses on employees in a seaside amusement park. Employees regularly experienced ‘misbehaviour’ (such as abusive language, attempted theft and violence) b…
Progress in dark tourism and thanatourism research
This paper reviews academic research into dark tourism and thanatourism over the 1996–2016 period. The aims of this paper are threefold. First, it reviews the evolution of the concepts of dark tourism and thanatourism, highlighting similarities and differences between them. Second it evaluates progress in 6 key themes and debates. These are: issues of the definition and scope of the concepts; ethical issues associated with such forms of tourism; …
Street names in Bucharest, 1990–1997
Life on the edge
On the basis of a study of forty health care delivery institutions in Florida, California, and New Jersey, this paper examines the interaction the immigration and health systems in the USA. We investigate barriers to care encountered by the foreign-born, especially unauthorized immigrants, and the systemic contradictions between demand for their labor and the absence of an effective immigration policy. Lack of access and high costs have forced th…
Uncertainty and Control in Professional Training
Donald Light, Jr., Uncertainty and Control in Professional Training, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Vol. 20, No. 4, Health Professions: Socialization, Organization, Utilization (Dec., 1979), pp. 310-322
Gazing on communism
This paper considers 'communist heritage' tourism (that is, the consumption of sites and sights associated with the former communist regimes) in contemporary Central and Eastern Europe. As one form of special interest tourism, this phenomenon is an illustration of the ever-diversifying tourist gaze. However, such tourism also raises wider issues concerning the relationship between tourism and the politics of identity in the region. While the form…
Habit, Memory, and the Persistence of Socialist-Era Street Names in Postsocialist Bucharest, Romania
The critical study of toponymy has paid considerable attention to the renaming of urban places following revolutionary political change. Such renaming is intended to institutionalize a new political agenda through shaping the meanings in everyday practices and landscapes. Renaming, however, might not always be successful, and this article examines this issue with reference to a market in Bucharest, Romania. Originally named Piaţa Moghioroş during…
Toponymy and the Communist city
Corpses, dead body politics and agency in human geography
This paper follows the mobilities between 1958 and 1990 of the dead body of Dr Petru Groza (1884–1958), a significant political figure in post‐World War II socialist Romania, to explore the implications for human geography of engaging with the dead. Although there has been a considerable interest in ‘geographies of the body’ and ‘deathscapes’, human geography has had relatively little to say about dead bodies. The paper draws on literatures from …
Introduction
Because the academic profession (as it is called) holds such a central position in higher education, and because higher education in America today influences behavior and ideas throughout the entire structure of the technocratic culture (Habermas, 1970; Jencks & Riesman, 1968:15-25), the academic profession is an important subject for sociological analysis. This special issue was organized to present new research and to assess the maturity of the…
Tourism and toponymy
Academic geographers have a long history of studying both tourism and place names, but have rarely made linkages between the two. Within critical toponymic studies there is increasing debate about the commodification of place names, but to date the role of tourism in this process has been almost completely overlooked. In some circumstances, toponyms can become tourist sights based on their extraordinary properties, their broader associations with…
Facing the future
Naming rights, place branding, and the tumultuous cultural landscapes of neoliberal urbanism
In recent decades, urban policymakers have increasingly embraced the selling of naming rights as a means of generating revenue to construct and maintain urban infrastructure. This practice of “toponymic commodification” first emerged with the commercialization of professional sports during the second half of the 20th century and has become an integral part of the policy toolkit of neoliberal urbanism more generally. As a result, the naming of eve…
Performing Transylvania
In recent years there has been increasing attention on tourism as a form of performance. Moreover, some recent work has focused on the role of tourist performances in the making (and remaking) of tourist places. This article explores these issues with reference to Transylvania, Romania, through ethnographic fieldwork with a group of Western tourists visiting Transylvania for Halloween. It was clear that, for these tourists, their visit to Transyl…
European Union enlargement, post-accession migration and imaginative geographies of the ‘New Europe’
This paper is concerned with re-imaginings of 'Europe' following the accession to the European Union (EU) of former 'Eastern European' countries. In particular it explores media representations of post-EU accession migration from Romania to the United Kingdom in the UK and Romanian newspaper press. Todorova's (1997) notion of Balkanism is deployed as a theoretical construct to facilitate the analysis of these representations as first, the continu…
An Unwanted Past
This paper considers how the legacy of communism and revolution has become the focus of interest among Western tourists in post-communist Bucharest. It argues that 'communist heritage' tourism - the consumption of key sights and sites associated with the Ceausescu regime and its overthrow - has emerged as a particular form of cultural or heritage tourism for special interest tourists. However, this is a heritage which is defined and constructed e…
It’s not that we like death or anything’
This paper explores motives for visiting a lightest dark (heritage) tourism attraction. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 24 visitors to the London Dungeon. Few visitors reported an interest in death, suffering or the macabre as important in their decision to visit, a finding which accords with research at a range of other types of darker places. Instead, most people visited from general or incidental reasons that were unrelated to …
Dracula tourism in Romania Cultural identity and the state
Toponymy as Commodity
In recent years the study of urban toponymy (place names) has been revitalized by the emergence of a 'critical toponymies' approach. This focuses on the cultural politics of place naming and the decisions involved in attributing names to the urban landscape. However, in contemporary cities place names have an economic role in addition to their political role. In particular, there have been recent calls for more attention to the commodification of…
The U.S. Health System and Immigration
We examine the institutions that comprise the U.S. health system and their relationship to a surging immigrant population. The clash between the system and this human flow originates in the large number of immigrants who are unauthorized, poor, and uninsured and, hence, unable to access a system largely based on ability to pay. Basic concepts from sociological theory are brought to bear on the analysis of this clash and its consequences. Data fro…
Socialist statuary as post-socialist hybrids
Place, national identity and post-socialist transformations
Visitors' use of interpretive media at heritage sites
Although heritage interpretation is a central component of the modern heritage industry there has been relatively little concern with how visitors to heritage sites make use of interpretive media. This paper reports a study of visitors' use of three interpretive media — exhibitions, outdoor panels, and stereo-audio tours — commonly employed at one type of heritage site, namely ancient monuments. Interpretation is an important component of the vis…
Covid-19 in Romania
COVID-19 has played out in Romania in a similar way to that in many other European countries. The government implemented decisive early measures which were able to keep the infection and mortality rates relatively low. This paper considers three distinctive aspects of the situation in Romania. First, the situation was complicated by the influence of transnational migrant workers, large numbers of whom returned to Romania when the pandemic started…
Dwelling-mobility
Encountering the victims of Romanian communism
Many states in post-communist East-Central Europe have established memorial museums which aim to tell the story of suffering under the communist regime. They also seek to encourage visitors to develop empathy for the victims of communist repression. This paper explores the responses of a group of young people to a memorial museum in Romania (Sighet Memorial Museum), focusing on how these visitors experienced empathy for the victims of communist-e…
Response to Sol Yurick's "Political Economy of Junk"; Response to a Response
I would make several comments on Sol Yurick's article, "The Political Economy of Junk," in the December 1970 MR. I have no quarrel with his basic thesis that the current spread of, and alarm over, drug addiction must be viewed in the context of the political and economic system from which it springs. I think, though, that Mr. Yurick depicts its genesis too much as a conscious, deliberate act of Nixon or "the ruling class." Furthermore I think he …
Introduction
Because the academic profession (as it is called) holds such a central position in higher education, and because higher education in America today influences behavior and ideas throughout the entire structure of the technocratic culture (Habermas, 1970; Jencks & Riesman, 1968:15-25), the academic profession is an important subject for sociological analysis. This special issue was organized to present new research and to assess the maturity of the…
Costs and benefits of alcohol consumption
The Sociological Calendar
This paper introduces the sociological calendar as a device for condensing and analyzing data about social processes. Its construction leads the investigator to discover the socially defined units of time in the important dimensions of the social process being studied and facilitates comparative analyses through time and across dimensions. Illustrations from medical school, internship, and psychiatric residence are presented. They are used for a …
Professional Problems in Treating Suicidal Persons
Because physicians, psychiatrists and other clinicians must constantly deal with suicidal people, it is important to examine the problems and limitations of actual practice. This is made difficult by the paucity of research. What few clinical studies we do have manifest strong patterns which this article identifies as important hypotheses for further investigation. This is the third in a series of articles designed to shift sociological research …
Suicide Care
The author describes obstacles to education in suicide care that arise from misinformation and from personal and professional anxieties among residents and staff. An approach is presented to managing these obstacles by continuing education of all staff, group discussions of multiple clinical cases with senior staff, expert didactic teaching, individual and group supervision, and multidisciplinary team experience. The approach emphasizes provision…
Sociology
The Dynamics of University Protest
The Dynamics of University Protest
Becoming Professional
Uncertainty and Control in Professional Training
Donald Light, Jr., Uncertainty and Control in Professional Training, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Vol. 20, No. 4, Health Professions: Socialization, Organization, Utilization (Dec., 1979), pp. 310-322
Training in Ambiguity
The Tribal Rites of Specialists in Training
Book reviewed in this article: Becoming Psychiatrists. By Donald Light Men Who Control Women's Health: The Miseducation of Obstetrician-Gynecologists. By Diana Scully
Becoming Psychiatrists
The Changing Character of the Medical Profession
Technological advances in medicine have greatly enhanced the ability of physicians to treat disease and disability, but, at the same time, changes in the organization and management of health care services in the United States have imposed constraints on their autonomy. How have these changes--medical advancement and professional decline--affected the theoretical concept of the medical profession? Challenging the prevailing model of professional …
Outpatients and their doctors
Market-based product development in heritage tourism
Visitors' use of interpretive media at heritage sites
Although heritage interpretation is a central component of the modern heritage industry there has been relatively little concern with how visitors to heritage sites make use of interpretive media. This paper reports a study of visitors' use of three interpretive media — exhibitions, outdoor panels, and stereo-audio tours — commonly employed at one type of heritage site, namely ancient monuments. Interpretation is an important component of the vis…
Characteristics of the audience for ‘events’ at a heritage site
Heritage and national identity
Within heritage studies the relationship between national heritage and national identity is frequently taken as axiomatic. The construction of a national heritage is an important part of nation‐building, and historic buildings and monuments can be powerful symbols of a nation's aspirations and identity. Yet this relationship has received relatively little empirical investigation. This paper reports an exploratory study of the heritage/national id…
Teaching 'Transition' in Central and Eastern Europe through Fieldwork
Since 1989 the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe have been in a state of 'transition' to a market economy and pluralist democracy. However, despite the increasing academic interest in the region, teaching about transition to undergraduates is a subject which has received little attention. This paper identifies some of the particular challenges and problems of teaching about transition in post-communist countries, particular…
Saving John Worthy
Romanian tourism in the post-communist period
Gazing on communism
This paper considers 'communist heritage' tourism (that is, the consumption of sites and sights associated with the former communist regimes) in contemporary Central and Eastern Europe. As one form of special interest tourism, this phenomenon is an illustration of the ever-diversifying tourist gaze. However, such tourism also raises wider issues concerning the relationship between tourism and the politics of identity in the region. While the form…
An Unwanted Past
This paper considers how the legacy of communism and revolution has become the focus of interest among Western tourists in post-communist Bucharest. It argues that 'communist heritage' tourism - the consumption of key sights and sites associated with the Ceausescu regime and its overthrow - has emerged as a particular form of cultural or heritage tourism for special interest tourists. However, this is a heritage which is defined and constructed e…
Political science (55 works) · Sociology (48 works) · Law (40 works) · Politics (33 works) · Tourism (33 works) · Law (29 works) · Archaeology (25 works) · History (25 works) · Diverse Aspects of Tourism Research (24 works) · Aesthetics (21 works)