As Pierre Bourdieu has taught us, there are correlations between social position and aesthetic taste. In a country like Laos, however, social position is not only determined by class but also by the communist party, rural configurations and ethnicity. These
dimensions need to be explored before studying their correlations with musical taste.
The first part of the lecture will briefly outline the dimensions of social structure that matter in Laos and the second will correlate them with varieties of music prevailing in them. The final section will explore what role youth culture plays in each of the
identified social positions and to which degree youth culture can be distinguished from the cultures of older generations.