["\nResearch in environmental sociology typically focuses on how communities mobilize against polluting industries in “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) reactions or accept industrial pollution. Instead, I explore how different groups react to the same proposed development with divergent NIMBY and “place it in my backyard” (PIMBY) demands. I use the emblematic case of controversial proposed copper mines in the rural Iron Range region of Minnesota to examine how different social actors use cultural repertoires to interpret development and assert legitimacy in making decisions about the place. Through interviews, ethnographic observation, and discourse analysis, I find that decisions about mining development become controversial because of how the projects resonate, or conflict, with people’s emotional meanings of place, not simply material benefits or scientific assessments of pollution. Pro‐mining mobilization from rural, white, and working‐class residents is justified by the right to defend a way of life. Opposition from environmentalists is framed as protecting a cherished place understood through experiences of outdoor recreation and wilderness that is now threatened by development. I advance environmental sociology by using concepts of cultural repertoires and place to examine cultural dynamics of environmental conflicts and how groups construct meanings of justice and assert legitimacy.\n", "Sociological Forum, Volume 35, Issue 3, Page 673-695, September 2020. "]