Governance, participation and hegemony: governing Cananea and the Río Sonora Region

By building upon critical debates on ‘network governance’ in policy-making, while finding complementarities with debates on corporate social responsibility in Mexican mining, the paper argues that in the (mis)management of information and implementation of participatory mechanisms, ‘administrative domination’ is found through the relationships held between government authorities and the mining corporation. Based on Cananea and the Sonora River Region, Gramscian understandings of hegemony are discussed. However, this approach faces limitations when encountering decentered relations that go beyond state actors. Therefore, Foucauldian debates on governmentality are useful to complement understandings on the nature of power relations in existing governance arrangements.