ABSTRACT
This chapter explores what happens to social structure, culture and practices if two major social transformations take place within one generation. It pursues empirical, theoretical and methodological goals. The empirical goal is to shed light on contemporary Laotian society by focusing on the transformation of people's habitus. The chapter draws on Bourdieu's theory of social structure. Bourdieu argues that practices in capitalist societies require not only economic resources but also knowledge, abilities, certificates, connections, memberships, titles and so on. He subsumed them under the notions of economic, cultural, social and symbolic capital. The capital states in which a bourgeois revolution introduced capitalism and democracy have transformed precapitalist structures by successively integrating the lower ranks. In a society based on liberalism, people are individualized, disciplined and mobilized for the division of labor and the "wealth of nations" Their competition is considered responsible for the inequalities of individual property that seem to be the social structure.
