ABSTRACT
This chapter complements conceptualizations of social ontology, reading them as social constructions in a strong sense, i.e. as symbolic-material world-making. Based on a ‘world-ecological praxeology,’ it proposes an active and dynamic entanglement of precapitalist and capitalist ontologies. Focusing on precapitalist mueang–pa duality and capitalist frontier ontology in the context of Laos, this chapter stresses the aspects of power and politics, and demonstrates that both ontologies relate productively, though uneasily. Social ontologies can therefore be seen as persisting as active elements in various historical phases in which they keep making practical sense. However, this is not to reduce ontologies to economics or to presuppose a smooth interplay of precapitalist and capitalist ontologies as world-making projects, as both can be quite at odds – not least because of the morality implied in precapitalist ontologies such as the mueang–pa duality. Likewise, socio-ontological persistence is not to be hypostasized as if ontologies were somehow a priori eternal; rather, it depends on the specific quality of certain hegemonic world-making projects whether earlier ontologies keep making practical sense.
