It became widely accepted in political sociology in the 1950s and 1960s that, at least in the “advanced industrial democracies,” if not elsewhere in the world, national patterns o f political behavior had displaced ones that could be thought o f as local or regional. In part this resulted from empirical research, such as that o f Stokes (1967), which claimed to find that in both Britain and America there had been a progressive “nationalization” o f political attitudes; he inferred from this that there was consequently a nationalization o f electoral forces bringing about political attitudes. In part, however, it reflected a m ore deep-seated frame o f m ind concerning the significance o f place in m odern “national” societies as opposed to traditional “ local” communities. Contem porary political sociology has inherited from its parent disciplines, political science and sociology, a set o f biases against the possibility that place can be o f any significance in m odern societies. It may be o f importance in traditional ones, but not ultimately since they too are fated to modernize. Place, it seems, has no present or future, only a past.