The Dereliction Tourist: Ethical Issues of Conducting Research in Areas of Industrial Ruination

Dereliction tourism is the act of seeking out abandoned industrial sites as sites of aesthetic pleasure, leisure or adventure. Drawing on research in areas of industrial ruination in Russia, the UK and North America, this article examines the role of the ‘dereliction tourist’ as a way of critically reflecting on the ethics of ‘outsider’ research. Ethical problems are associated with both dereliction tourism and ethnographic research in areas of industrial decline, including voyeurism, romanticization, and the reproduction of negative stereotypes about marginal people and places. However, both dereliction tourism and ethnographic research also share more positive ethical possibilities through offering alternative ways of imagining places and raising social justice awareness of issues related to deprivation and blight. Through considering the ambivalent figure of the dereliction tourist in relation to ethnography, this article advances a way of being in the research field through intrinsic ethical reflection and practice.