As a consequence of the effects of globalization the concept of place is obtaining increased attention among social dialectologists and sociolinguists. Is it still possible to assume a cultural and historical bond between places, people and languages in a time characterized by migration, geographic and social mobility? The study offers an account of place as a factor and variable in dialectology and sociolinguistics throughout four periods: historicism, structuralism, late modernity and – what I here suggest to call – reconstructionism. The account is related to a critical examination of the construction of a ‘natural’ linking of language, people and place.