ABSTRACT
This chapter explains significance of place in Latin America has only permitted glimpses of a subject that demands detailed attention. There is the ever-present issue of scale. If places are social constructs then how best may people compare the house or home to the nation state. Perhaps people should be looking to the operational mechanisms that allow people to attach themselves to places of quite different types. At the level of the domestic unit or small village kinship may be of significance in the intensity and frequency of interaction. But at the level of systems of cities only perhaps some families can maintain ties, the remaining population resorting itself amongst the proliferation of other institutions such as clubs, schools, neighborhood stores. Thus perhaps place attachment does not weaken with modernization but rather is transformed into new and subtle guises. The life-histories of distinctive groups within society to that one's "place potential" greatly increases as the culture becomes complex.
