ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes the findings of our country studies and relates them to the increasingly global structures and flows of capitalism. The main idea is to redirect research on inequality from capitalism to domination. The chapter summarizes some of the points with regard to inequality in Brazil, Germany, India and Laos and draws a comparison between them. It attempts to establish some theoretical conclusions on the basis of the comparison. The chapter presents preliminary ideas about the global structure of inequality and its connections to capitalism. It demonstrates that colonial, socialist and even precolonial social structures persist as sociocultures underneath the capitalist class structure. The social structure of Laos is changing rapidly but the precapitalist sociocultures persist and still inform the majority of structures and habitus. The Lao class structure differs from that in countries with a longer capitalist past, such as Germany and Brazil.
