ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses a central concern for the study of civilizations that of cultural-structural continuities in processes of change, to which S. N. Eisenstadt's comprehensive approach has contributed significantly. Specifically, it focuses on the interplay of the structure of inequalities and of trust in connection with the persistence of patron-client relations in Latin America.Patron-client relations are particularistic, hierarchical, and diffuse ties contracted by social actors who command resources that they exchange in asymmetric but mutually beneficial, open-ended transactions. Such relations have been noted in Latin America in a wide variety of situations. Long-term attachments emerged, for instance, in the Bolivian and other Latin American haciendas and in the cattle ranch complexes of the Argentinian and Uruguayan pampas and the Brazilian region of Rio Grande do Sul, based on the mediated access to resources deemed by clients or patrons to be "critical".
