1 Sociocultures
Why should a book on Laos begin with a theoretical chapter? One reason is to acquaint the reader with the theoretical concepts which inform the following analyses. A more important reason is that too many naive and ‘Orientalist’ writings on Laos have been published which tell the reader more about the author than about the country.1 Unless writers adopt a critical attitude towards their assumptions and presuppositions, they tend to repeat stereotypes—stereotypes that are particularly convincing and attractive in the case of Laos. At the very least, critical reflexivity involves examining one’s tacit theoretical presuppositions. It implies a transformation of these presuppositions into hypotheses and a review of the concepts used in formulating these hypotheses. The following paragraphs aim at an explanation of this process as it affected my research for this book.
There is yet another reason for beginning with a theoretical chapter. The main purpose of this study is to shed light on contemporary social and cultural change in Laos. An additional goal is to use my research on Laos to contribute to contemporary social theory. The first section of this chapter explains what the case of Laos can contribute to theory, the second introduces the specific sociological tradition to which the book attempts to contribute, and the third gives a sketch of the theoretical outcomes. Thus, this chapter both explains the theoretical framework which underlies the following chapters and explores its relevance for social theory.
The theoretical framework draws mainly on Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory. This was not a decision made at the desk—rather, during my years of research in Laos, it emerged as most applicable to the phenomena I was investigating. I began with a hermeneutical approach, inspired by Gadamer and Wittgenstein, dealing with the problem of intercultural understanding (Rehbein 1997). I then turned to linguistics and based my work more firmly on Wittgenstein and Austin (Rehbein and Sayaseng 2004). My increasing interest in the impact of ‘globalization’ on Laos led me to Marx and Wallerstein and from there to Bourdieu (Rehbein 2004). While all these thinkers shape the following chapters, Bourdieu’s influence is most explicit—I base the core concepts of this book on his social theory. However, my empirical work pressed me to revise important aspects of this theory and to introduce a number of new concepts. While the reasons for this are partly explained in this chapter, they become fully evident only during the course of the book.
Globalization and social theory
Classical sociological theories are based on European history and tradition. Sociology as an academic discipline emerged at the same time as industrialization, class society and the nation state; it appeared in nineteenth-century Europe at the same time as that continent was acquiring political and economic dominance in the world (Hobson 2004). Sociology made its first steps with Comte and Saint- Simon shortly after the French Revolution, and emancipated itself from philosophy and economics during the nineteenth century. All of these disciplines were based on a Eurocentric conception of history, consisting of the ‘prehistory’ of civilization, the rise of civilization in the Middle East, an intellectual peak in Greece, a political peak under the Romans, a decline during the Middle Ages and, finally, the rise of capitalism and modernity in Europe. This schema is linked to evolutionary thinking in other disciplines. It has now largely been abandoned in academia and has never been fully accepted in the global South.
However, the academic analysis of social structure still more or less unconsciously adheres to this Eurocentric notion of history, whether it is based on Marx, Durkheim, Weber or Parsons. In fact, various subdisciplines of sociology are explicitly focused on the transition from feudalism to capitalism, on modernization and on social classes within the nation state. Ulrich Beck has called this way of looking at social phenomena the ‘container model of society’ (Beck 1997). The container model perceives society as a closed entity with a clear-cut, stratified social structure—in which every individual has one fixed social position—and an inherent law of development (or evolution or modernization).2 Beck has argued that this model should be replaced with regard to globalization. This book seeks to contribute to an alternative model of social structure by investigating a society that has always been impossible to understand on the basis of the container model.
According to the container model, individuals belong to one society—the container. Within this society they have unequal opportunities and resources for action. As many individuals share the same structure of opportunity and resources, they can be grouped into classes or strata. In this kind of analysis, opportunities and resources are usually restricted to economic factors, particularly occupation and wealth. This economic bias probably has to do with the fact that sociology as a discipline emerged from economics. The first classical model of social structure was developed by Marx (e.g., clearly in Marx 1974), who studied the transition from feudalism to capitalism as the unfolding of the ‘capitalist mode of production’. According to his analysis, there are only two classes in a capitalist society: the owners of the means of production (capitalists); and the labourers, who do not own any of the means of production apart from their bodies (see Figure 1.1).
After Marx, Max Weber (1972) argued that social structure was more complex. On the one hand, there are many groups that are neither capitalists nor labourers; on the other, he proposed that factors apart from occupation and wealth should be considered. However, Weber did not abandon the container model, he adhered to the Eurocentric notion of history, and in his analyses he focused on occupation and wealth. In the decades following Weber, a more sophisticated approach to social structure developed, in Anglo-Saxon countries within the school of Talcott Parsons, on the European continent mainly by Theodor Geiger (especially 1932) and his disciples. These ‘stratification’ theories follow Weber in his critique of Marx and set up elaborate and complex models of social structure. They are less theoretical than Marxism, and less focused on economic and historical factors, but they still adhere to the container model, Eurocentrism and the focus on occupation and wealth.
Figure 1.1 Social structure according to Marx
Stratification theory has become especially sophisticated in Germany. One of its leading representatives, Rainer Geißler (1996), has developed a model of social structure that might serve as an ideal type of the container model (see Figure 1.2). It is derived from Ralf Dahrendorf’s ‘house model’, which is also a container model. Every room in the house is inhabited by one group, although walls and individuals are mobile. The basic criterion for the distribution of groups into ‘rooms’ is their occupation (Geißler 1996: 85). In addition, ethnicity, mentality, life-chances and subcultures also play a role. Looking at Geißler’s model, it immediately becomes evident that he—unlike Dahrendorf—cannot fit everyone into the house. Foreigners remain outside. Furthermore, as he explains, the walls have become extremely permeable, rooms overlap and intermingle and social agents themselves are hardly aware of their own distribution (1996: 87). On the theoretical level, these inconsistencies do not seem to be an issue for Geißler—he simply holds fast to his traditional presuppositions.
If an ‘explanatory’ model is so imprecise that it fails to tell us very much about reality, there is surely a problem with it. The outsiders in Geißler’s model remind one strangely of the ‘epicycles’ devised to save Ptolemy’s model of the universe from collapse. Migrants are from ‘another society’, a different container. Yet they can no longer be ignored, as they make up around 5 per cent of the world’s population (and if their children are included, many European cities have an immigrant population of 30 per cent). How should migrants fit into ‘our’ society? The same question arises with regard to other aspects of globalization, such as the building of regional blocs, the rise of transnational movements and the constitution of international and global institutions. The theory of social structure has to react to this reality, but not by inventing epicycles.
Globalization and non-Western sociocultural contexts have only just begun to inform theoretical approaches in the West.3 At the same time, sociological theory has had little influence on research on the non-Western world, and debates on globalization often dismiss classical theory altogether. This book attempts to interweave three vital strands—globalization, sociological theory and empirical research—on an often overlooked small and poor country in Southeast Asia. This process has led to revision in all three areas. The concept of globalization is linked to empirical research and to classical theories. Theories are detached from Eurocentrism, the container model and evolutionism. Finally, empirical research is informed by theoretical concepts and the debates on globalization.
Figure 1.2 Dahrendorf’s model of German social structure as adapted by Geißler
Source: Geißler (1996: 86)
Since the acknowledgement of a new international phenomenon—subsumed under the fashionable term ‘globalization’—classical sociological theories have had to be revised. Phenomena like transnationalism, glocalization, diaspora, identity politics and the transformation of the nation state go beyond the scope of theories shaped under the influence of European capitalism and the rise of the nation state. The concept of globalization has been sufficiently discussed to draw some preliminary conclusions. We now need to link these discussions to classical social theories from Smith and Marx to Bourdieu and Wallerstein. Finally, although the study of Southeast Asia has outgrown the framework of Orientalism, sociological studies of the region that are theoretically informed remain rare. In my opinion, Southeast Asia can no longer be studied without reference to the contemporary debates on both globalization and classical sociological theory. Decisions made in the Washington office of the World Bank influence the most remote subsistence farmers in the mountains of Laos. At the same time, the debates on globalization must take account of empirical research rather than focusing on abstract notions of globalism that have little meaning beyond the walls of the university campus. The same is true for the interpretation of our sociological classics.
In the following chapters, I seek to contribute to this task by linking empirical research on the influence of ‘globalization’ on Lao society to the developed social theory of Pierre Bourdieu. At first glance, Bourdieu’s theory seems entirely unsuitable to the Lao framework. In contrast to France in the late twentieth century— Bourdieu’s main subject—Laos is a markedly heterogeneous society, the nation state is young and underdeveloped, the Lao diaspora in the West is the backbone of the economy, and various local traditions, colonial heritage and socialist rule intermingle with the currents of globalization and transnational structures. The container model of society—that Bourdieu also adhered to—views society in terms of a nation state containing a homogeneous population with a clear class structure. It is hard to verify this conception in Laos. In my opinion, contemporary Laos is not an aberrant case to be dismissed as an exception. It is rather the container model of society that refers only to a limited period of history—namely the rise of European capitalism, during which sociology emerged as a discipline—that is itself aberrant. Despite all their shortcomings, the concepts, methods and the theory of social structure developed by Bourdieu transcend many of the weaknesses of stratification theory. In this book, I seek to show that Bourdieu’s sociology can be transformed into a theory that suits ‘pre-modern’ societies as well as the age of globalization.
Bourdieu and Laos
This study does not aim to revise the rich and sophisticated corpus of Western sociology by relating it to Laos. My research in Laos has revealed the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu to be particularly useful and fertile in this context (see Rehbein 2004), despite remaining within a Eurocentric framework—even though Bourdieu himself started his career as a sociologist and anthropologist in Algeria at the end of the colonial period in the 1950s. As a result, his theory has had to be revised in several respects; throughout the book, these revisions are made with reference to specific empirical questions. In this chapter, I introduce Bourdieu’s main concepts and discuss the most important conceptual revisions made for this study (for a more detailed introduction, see Rehbein 2006b).
Bourdieu has never published a concise and consistent overview of his theory. Neither did he define his concepts univocally. Rather, he introduced them in a variety of contexts and gave a different definition in each context—reflecting the priority he accorded to empirical work and his attempts to avoid reification of an abstract conceptual apparatus. His key concepts often resemble everyday terms, but their respective meanings bear only a family resemblance, sharing a core of meaning but without clear affiliations beyond that. In this study, I utilize Bourdieu’s concepts, but seek to be clearer and more consistent in their usage.
At the centre of Bourdieu’s theory is the conceptual pair of habitus and field. These terms replace the traditional oppositions of subject and object, action and structure, determination and freedom (Bourdieu 1980). Briefly and somewhat inaccurately, ‘habitus’ is society embodied and ‘field’ refers to society outside this embodied structure. More accurately, subject and object cannot be separated from each other. There is no subject without objective structures, and subjectivity develops only within objectivity; but objective structures only exist on the basis of subjective action. The subject emerges through the embodiment of courses of action, which precede the subject and are objectively prescribed (Bourdieu 1984: 77, 170–5, 467–70). However, these courses of action are themselves modified and renewed through subjective action.
An embodied course of action forms a disposition (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 133). The habitus is not one habit, but a bundle of sociologically relevant dispositions—or habits or patterns of acting. Dispositions are not the property of a subject as they are usually shared by a group of subjects, even though every subject may have a characteristic combination of dispositions. That means there are different levels of habitus ranging from dispositions shared by all human beings to idiosyncratic dispositions. Bourdieu focuses on the intermediate levels, which are socially specific. I follow him in this.
The habitus develops through—mostly unconscious—training. This is exemplified by learning to play a musical instrument or the acquisition of language. Many of these learned dispositions are necessary for a person to act in a society. They are capabilities. Bourdieu (1984: 80–5) subsumes capabilities and other resources that are necessary for social action under the concept of capital. Conventionally, the concept of capital is confined to economic resources, especially money. Recently, the concepts of social capital and human capital have been introduced to refer to resources that cannot be immediately measured in and exchanged for money (see especially Fukuyama 1995; Putnam 1993). Bourdieu’s concept of capital resembles these terms. However, the concepts of human and social capital still refer to economics; they refer to the value of resources for the economy. By contrast, Bourdieu’s concept of capital refers to the whole of society and to social structure. It interprets resources as prerequisites for status, possibilities of action and access to various social spheres. In other words, the economy is only one field of action among many.
According to Bourdieu (1984: 109–12), we need to take into account not only the total amount of capital a social group or an individual disposes of but the relative strengths of various types of capital and the history of their acquisition. This is usefully illustrated by comparing old wealth with newly acquired wealth. If we compare two owners of big companies with identical wealth, we will find that the one who acquired his wealth more recently usually has far less influence— not only in the economic field but in most other fields. This is because old wealth is linked to other forms of capital, especially social capital. Bourdieu’s definition of social capital is more restricted than those of Putnam and Fukuyama, referring only to personal and family relationships. Someone from an old, wealthy family enjoys social connections that the nouveaux riches lack, by definition.
Besides lacking such connections, the parvenu usually does not know how to behave ‘correctly’. Only people who grew up in a certain segment of society develop a particular habitus. Groups whose habitus is not formed in a distinguished social environment gain entry to a privileged habitus only with difficulty, even if they have the financial means. If we consider the wealthiest segment of society, we might think of rock stars, football players and criminals. They enjoy significant economic capital but lack other types of capital. While it is necessary to have substantial wealth to belong to the dominant segments of society, one also has to know how to behave. In European societies, part of being a member of the social elite is to cherish expensive wines. Newcomers who can afford expensive wine, and value it as a status symbol, nevertheless remain outsiders to the social environment in which the taste for it is developed, even if they have the financial means to acquire it. A football player does not automatically know how to drink fine wine, which glasses to use, how to distinguish a good from a bad vintage, and especially how to talk about it. Even if he learns all of this, he would still be ignorant of how to blow his nose in such an environment, which politicians to favour and what to know about history and society. Bourdieu subsumed all of these abilities under the concept of cultural capital. The formulation and analysis of this concept are certainly among Bourdieu’s greatest achievements.4 Apart from dispositions, cultural capital comprises education and professional titles as well as material cultural symbols, such as works of art.
In his major work, Distinction (1984; originally 1979), Bourdieu focuses on economic and cultural capital. In other works, he distinguishes other types of capital, such as social, symbolic and political. Symbolic capital, for Bourdieu (1984: 291), is the prestige conferred by a title, a function or some other personal endowment. For example, economic capital does not only enable persons to buy something but gives them a certain prestige. The same is true for a specific accent, dress or diploma. Political capital derives from a political function (Bourdieu 1998a); Bourdieu apparently discussed this only with reference to socialist countries. In addition to these types of capital, Bourdieu introduces a host of other varieties in his writings without defining or explicating them. This should not concern us unduly as the function of the general concept is important, not its specific forms. The various forms of capital can be converted into one another or, as I would prefer to say, one form of capital can be used to acquire another. This can lead to an increase in both forms of capital (such as the use of social capital to acquire economic capital) or to the expenditure of one form to acquire another (such as the use of economic capital to acquire cultural capital).5
One could say that capital for Bourdieu is a necessary resource for social action, which in a specific instance is regarded as correct and entails positive consequences for the agent. The concept of capital is closely related to that of habitus. Knowing how to blow your nose ‘correctly’ is at once part of one’s habitus and cultural capital. While both concepts overlap, they can be distinguished by their function: habitus determines one’s way of acting; capital determi...
