ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the connection between the devaluation of place and larger intellectual features of social science in order to provide a perspective on why a geographical political sociology such as that proposed earlier has been impossible. There are two stages to the devaluation of place in contemporary social science and political sociology. The first involves confusing the geographical concept of place with the sociological concept of community. The second stage involves inferring from the supposed 'eclipse of community' in modern society the waning significance of place. Confusing place and community is widespread in political sociology. The intellectual devaluation of place characteristic of orthodox social science in general and political sociology in particular has been traced in this chapter to a combination of influences: sociological, political, and intellectual. The growth of modernization theory as a weapon in the ideological combat of the Cold War added another nail to place's intellectual coffin.
