PLACE, IMAGINARY, IDENTITY:
PLACE ETHNOGRAPHY IN
TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, NEW MEXICO
by
TITA BERGER
B.A., Government, New Mexico State University, 1994
M.A., Government, New Mexico State University, 2001
Ph.D., American Studies, University of New Mexico, 2016
ABSTRACT
“Place for me is the locus of desire,” writes Lucy Lippard in the opening to Lure
of the Local (1997). This research project is about place. Two distinct sets of scholarship
on place emerged in the 1970s and the 1990s. A third wave of place scholarship is
evident today. Coming initially from geography and anthropology, the study of place is
now ubiquitous across fields—in history, cultural studies, architecture, planning, health
sciences, art and other disciplines. Despite the sustained interest in the study of place, one
of the hallmarks of place is the ranging and contested contours of what place means.
Place is defined, for the purposes of this study, as a describable location characterized by
a shifting confluence of historical, material, political, cultural, economic, built, sensed
and imagined qualities.
There are three distinct goals in this research project. First, this research project
seeks to explore how place has been theorized, imagined, and understood. Second, this
research project is an inquiry into how place can be studied. To these ends, I name,
define, and refine a method I call place ethnography. Place ethnography is a
methodological framework that blends ethnographic and historic research with a range of
disciplinary techniques in order to study place. I develop several concepts in this project.
These include the idea of a place imaginary, defined as a dominant place perception, the
concept of an historical vacancy, the perception of an emptiness in the historical fabric
and settlement of a place or region—a particular kind of place imaginary—and
topofabulas, a concept that describes a historically untenable place narratives that are
accepted as historical truth and are place defining. The third goal of this research project
is to apply place ethnographic methods to a specific place. To these ends, this research
project recounts a place ethnographic study of a small town named Truth or
Consequences, New Mexico undertaken from July 2012- August 2014.
This is where I get depart. I am leaving this site active. I will post from time to time. I am including a link below, to the full 471 page text of my dissertation. If you recognize yourself from our interview I hope you are proud of your knowledge and insight and wisdom. Any errors, and there are so very many errors (sic!), are all my own. I love you all. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I love your town, my town, our town.
