Rudy joins Boike Rehbein, author of Globalization, Society and Culture in Laos and Society in Contemporary Laos for a discussion on the past, present and future of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. We start by discussing the concept of habitus and how it can be used to study Laotian society. We then talk about the structure of pre-communist society, the communist takeover in 1975 and the early attempts to build a centralized economy, and the market reforms of 1986. We finish by discussing the bases of the Communist Party and the recent events in 2016 which saw the return of hardliner socialists to power.
A brief and comprehensive introduction to his work on Laos is the chapter Capitalist Transformation and Habitus in Laos he authored in the book The Socialist Market Economy in Asia: Development in China, Vietnam and Laos.
