SAM OBERTER

“An Unincorporated Town” is a photographic study of the deeply-rooted mining district of Morenci, AZ. Due to its unique isolation and harsh geography, the copper mine’s current owner, Freeport-McMoRan, continues the nearly extinct legacy on US soil of building, managing, and maintaining ownership of all the town’s property and services. Since unions were broken in 1986, recent community development appears to be an entirely private corporate endeavor. 

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has recreated present-day Morenci as a comprehensive community with extraordinary facilities. To an outsider, quality of life in Morenci appears exceptional across many measures. Such programs are pitched by proponents as win-win solutions that simultaneously support people, the environment, and corporate profit. Skeptics and critics would cautiously tie CSR to corporate power and interests that economize morality in service of the bottom line, and perpetuates capitalism itself. 

This reflection of Morenci aims to spark dialogue among academic circles; the community occupants themselves; and the remote consumer population that digests commodities without bearing witness to the shaping of land and workforce societies. Sitting atop a line of ore that has not only witnessed the full history of industrial town development, but that also promises future commodity wealth, Morenci offers a unique window both into our past, and a CSR-driven future.