Place Identity in a Resource‐Dependent Area of Northern British Columbia

Abstract

Residents of northern British Columbia's resource‐dependent areas have struggled to maintain the integrity of their communities as nonlocal firms exert ever‐increasing influence over the region's resources and landscapes. Local leaders both construct and mobilize place as a vital part of their efforts to promote community well‐being. This study focuses on the ways that the residents of three towns in the province's northern interior politicized place as a strategy for resisting the political influence and geographic designs of outsiders. The residents drew from their shared emotional response to powerlessness as a means of highlighting the inequities between insiders and outsiders, thereby generating a regional identity that calls into question the socioeconomic effects of resource industrialization in the north. In describing this dialectic between place making and economic restructuring, the article not only expands upon existing theory on place identity, but also contributes to a fuller understanding of the cultural geography of North America's resource‐dependent communities.