Place Identity and Copper Mining in Sonora, Mexico

Place is a process, and it is human experience and struggle that give meaning to place. Place identity is a cultural value shared by the community, a collective understanding about social identity intertwined with place meaning. The process through which place identity is constructed and internalized is poorly understood. This study analyzes the relationship between changing power relations, meanings in the built environment, and the emergence of place identity in two copper mining towns in Sonora, Mexico. I focus on how hegemony is materialized in the landscape. Hegemony can serve to create the perception of harmony between landscape meaning and material reality. If this occurs, place identity emerges. Through the course of my analysis, the focus on two mining towns in Sonora also illustrates the importance of place in political economic change, particularly for neoliberal adjustments in Mexico.