The Future of an Imagined Community: Trailer Parks, Tree Huggers, and Trinational Forces Collide in the Southern Arizona Borderlands

• Published in: Human organization 2001-07, Vol.60 (2), p.153-158
• Main Authors: Hackenberg, Robert A., Benequista, Nick
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Applied anthropology; Archipelagos; Arizona; Border regions; Borderlands; Borders; Boundaries; Cities; Commerce; Communities; Community; Community studies; Cultural change; Economic anthropology; Economic development; Environmental agencies; Exploitation; Future societies; Hotels & motels; Imagination; Imagined communities; International relations-US; Mescal; Mexico; Natural resources; Political anthropology; Population; Society; The U.S.-Mexico Borderlands in 2001: A Postnational Work in Progress; Towns; U.S.A; Valleys
• ISSN: 0018-7259; 1938-3525
• DOI: 10.17730/humo.60.2.fnj9q5yvt0tyed9t

Surviving small towns in southern Arizona have diversified to occupy a variety of specialized niches. Each responds to the needs of the nearby urban centers or to sectors of the broader and more remote public of visitors, vacationers, and transients. Benson, Arizona, a former market town and transportation center located on the San Pedro River, is seeking its niche in the "new economy." Options run the gamut from RV park communities through specialty-crop agricultural markets to psuedo-Western "frontier towns." But Benson's choices are now limited by an array of increasingly powerful public and private interests that see the San Pedro Valley as either a national environmental treasure to be preserved or an exploitable set of resources for international commercial development.