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Prepared for the Center for international studies, Mass. institute of technology.

This historiographic essay reviews literature on the Latin American family within the context of themes, issues, and methodologies important in studies of European and United States families. The family in Latin America is found to have been a more central and active force in shaping political, social, and economic institutions of the area than was true in Europe or the United States. The authors suggest that institutions in Latin American society make much more social sense, particularly in the nineteenth century, if viewed through the lens of family relationships. The eight essays in this issue represent research substantially expanding our knowledge of the nineteenth-century Latin American family as an active force.

This paper is derived from the authors' detailed studies of two groups of nineteenth-century families—eighteen families in Argentina and twenty-four in Chile. The studies revealed such remarkable similarities in the evolution of the two groups that it is possible to propose a broad generalization in respect to the social organization and national formation of both countries: there was, in each country, a three-generation sequence during which a number of families came together to form clusters that became the controlling entities of a region. Their base for political and economic control was either the existing capital city or a city that had been designated as the capital by these families.

Creativity and experiential learning are not often identified with government as work place. This paper explores a nascent county government initiative designed to engage employees in creative problem solving as means of person-al, professional and organizational development in service to community. The paper asks: 1) Does the program as currently working encourage employees to perceive them-selves as creative actors in their work environment? 2) Do program participants perceive their creative suggestions as welcomed by supervisors? 3) Are participants likely to be contributors in the process of exchanging ideas in the workplace? Literature on creativity as pertinent to experi-ential learning and deep smarts is reviewed. Program fea-tures designed to overcome bureaucracy and instill knowledge sharing as a means of creating an environment conducive to creativity, innovation and sharing of 'deep smarts' are considered. Then, study methods are de-scribed, results are presented and implications of findings are addressed. The paper concludes with a brief analysis of the study's limitations and suggestions for future re-search.