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Globalization, Culture and Society in Laos. By Boike Rehbein. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. Hardcover: 171pp.
Studies on contemporary Lao society are rare. In his book, Boike Rehbein investigates the effects of globalization on present-day Laos. Small in terms of its population (around six million inhabitants) and surrounded by much more powerful neighbours (notably Thailand, China and Vietnam), Laos plays a minor role in Asia's economic and political affairs. But, as Rehbein reminds us, the country "has always been at the crossroads of cultures, societies, economic forces and trade routes" (p. 4). Rehbein, a sociologist and long-term scholar of Laos, pursues two inter-related objectives in this study: firstly, to propose a revised model of Pierre Bourdieu's social theory - in particular the late French sociologist's concept of "field" - that is applicable to the Lao context; secondly, to contribute to theories of globalization through empirical research on a peripheral state.
The first two chapters develop the outline of the concepts and theoretical approach. Rehbein uses Bourdieu's concept of "field" by definition, a social arena in which agents' strategies seek to maintain or improve their positions by virtue of access to the specific resources (habitus and capital) that are at stake in the field - though with two main nuances. Firstly, he proposes a more dynamic social space (i.e., not all agents' strategies are motivated by competition and social gains, players can interpret rules and goals differently in a given field, and fields, e.g., economic and political - can even overlap, p. 25). Secondly, he seeks to broaden the boundaries of a field, i.e., beyond the nation state "container model" (p. 25), by taking into account the...