Southeast Asia

This chapter discusses social inequalities in Southeast Asia, not as a result of a capitalist class structure but, in contrast, explains the hierarchies within societies in transition to or as a consolidation of the capitalist class structure as a consequence of persisting sociocultures. Further, it argues that societal inequalities are grounded in the historical formation and persistence of sociocultures as specific forms of hierarchization. These sociocultures that persist until today – which shape inequalities in Southeast Asian countries while partially overlapping and partially conflicting with each other – are precolonial modes of hierarchization, colonial hierarchies and valuations, as well as postcolonial regimes such as socialist party systems and capitalism; they also introduce changes to the logic of social inequality while operating on and perpetuating all these older forms. This chapter highlights the importance of a diachronic perspective on social inequalities that enables an understanding of the persistence of aristocracies, socialist party structures, and colonial imaginations in societies that appear to have broken away from the past only on the surface, while carrying the residues of this past.