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  • Journal of Asian Social Science Research
    Vol. 7 No. 2 (2025)

    Editors’ Preface

    JASSR, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2025

    As 2025 draws to a close, it is hard to ignore how the year has felt simultaneously crowded and condensed: crises arriving faster than institutions can absorb them, public debate shaped in minutes and judged for months, and old questions about authority, belonging, dignity, and security returning in new guises. In many parts of Asia, the pressures have not only been political or economic, but interpretive. Who gets believed? Which stories become “common sense”? What counts as tradition, evidence, reform, or apology, and who has the standing to say so?

    This issue is assembled in that end-of-year atmosphere, when reflection becomes unavoidable and simplifications feel especially tempting. The articles gathered here resist those shortcuts. They show meaning being made, contested, and operationalised across different arenas: in the mosque and on the feed, at the tomb and in the campaign, inside the household and across regional policy forums, at the distribution line and within local patronage systems, and in diplomatic theatre where a single apology (or its absence) can ripple into livelihoods. What emerges is not a single verdict on “where Asia is headed,” but a set of careful, grounded accounts of how power travels through platforms, institutions, families, and symbols.

    We open with Imtiaz Hussain’s study, “Pakistani Mosque Imams’ Perspectives on Youth Religious Extremism on Facebook and YouTube: A Diagnostic Survey.” At a time when discussions of online radicalization often swing between moral panic and technological determinism, Hussain’s decision to foreground mosque imams as key informants is both pragmatic and analytically revealing. Using a survey of 411 imams in Punjab, guided by Uses and Gratifications Theory, the article maps how religious leaders perceive Facebook and YouTube as channels through which extremist ideas circulate among youth—and, importantly, how these perceptions vary by residence, education, and experience. The piece offers empirical detail where public debate can be thin, and it invites a difficult but necessary conversation: what does effective prevention look like when community leaders themselves are not simply “targets” of policy, but potential co-authors of counter-narratives and digital literacy efforts?

    From Pakistan’s platform-mediated anxieties, we move to Indonesia’s layered religious landscape through Yanwar Pribadi’s “Religious and Political Narratives in Islamic Iconization: The Case of Kyai Kholil of Madura.” The article treats iconization not as a static label bestowed by tradition, but as a living process, maintained through pilgrimage practices, pesantren networks, and contested memories. Pribadi’s anthropological fieldwork and careful engagement with historical and biographical materials illuminate how Kyai Kholil’s saintly reputation, genealogies of learning, and symbolic proximity are mobilized across devotional and political arenas, particularly within Nahdlatul Ulama milieus. Read alongside broader debates about charisma and authority, the article offers a grounded reminder: in many communities, the past is not “behind” politics. It is one of politics’ most renewable resources.

    Several contributions in this issue refuse to separate “public policy” from “private life,” showing instead how they are braided together. Md Abdul Jalil’s “Marriage Dissolution through Divorced Women’s Voices: New Insights from Bangladesh” centers divorced women’s narratives: what dissolution meant to them, what pushed them toward it, and how they interpret the decision after the fact. The findings depict divorce as neither simply tragedy nor straightforward liberation: women describe education and employment as enabling autonomy, while also pointing to polygamy, extramarital affairs, in-law interference, tensions around social media use, and family influences as drivers of breakdown. Particularly striking is the coexistence of relief and regret—agency and self-blame—in the same accounts. The article’s contribution lies not only in documenting reasons, but in showing how moral evaluation is lived: how women carry the social and emotional calculus of divorce long after the legal event concludes.

    Gender, in this volume, is also examined at the scale of regional diplomacy and institutional strategy. Ilham Dary Athallah, Hayara Khairia, and Tsabita Husna, in “Indonesia’s Strategic Rationale for Championing the ASEAN Gender Mainstreaming Strategic Framework,” take up an apparent paradox: why push hard for a regional gender framework if domestic regulations already exist? Their answer, built through qualitative analysis of policy documents, statements, and scholarly literature, frames Indonesia as a norm entrepreneur operating on two tracks. The ASEAN Gender Mainstreaming Strategic Framework (AGMSF) is read as a way to localize global gender principles within ASEAN’s normative style while also strengthening domestic implementation through peer learning, reputational incentives, and a kind of external scaffolding. What emerges is a portrait of governance as negotiation: between global norms and local ethical narratives, between regional leadership and home-front constraints, and between formal architecture and uneven practice.

    That tension between design and delivery is taken up in Md. Nure Alam and Maruf Hasan Rumi’s “Assessing the Open Market Sale (OMS) as an Urban Food Safety Net in Bangladesh: Policy and Practice Gaps.” Social protection programs are often judged by their intention; this article insists on judging them by experience. Using interviews with beneficiaries, key informants, and documentary materials under a critical realist sensibility, the authors trace how OMS’s promise of subsidized grains is thinned by long queues, uncertainty, limited rations, poor quality, weak complaint mechanisms, and deeper distortions linked to targeting errors, underfunding, capacity constraints, and corruption. The article holds two realities at once: OMS can offer short-term relief, and yet still fail many of the households it is meant to protect. It gives “transparency” a lived shape showing where leakages occur, how local power relations bend distribution, and why reform must be structural rather than cosmetic.

    Finally, this issue broadens the lens beyond domestic institutions to the politics of international perception in Noel Yee Sinco’s “Tourism As Osmosis: The Role of Apology Diplomacy in Shaping Tourist Arrivals in The Philippines.” Covering 2008 to 2025 and drawing on an interrupted time-series approach, the article examines how crises, ranging from hostage incidents to maritime disputes and environmental controversies, interact with state responses in shaping tourist flows. Sinco’s “osmosis” framing offers a useful way to think about tourism not as a steady pipeline but as a permeable system: trust, fear, and reputation move across borders, and symbolic gestures can open or close the valve. The argument that timely, sincere apologies can support recovery, while delayed or absent apologies can prolong reputational damage, raises productive questions about soft power as an economic instrument, and about crisis management as a form of governance judged internationally in near real time.

    Taken together, these articles demonstrate the strength of contemporary Asian social science when it resists easy binaries. Religion appears here as both sanctuary and political resource; social media as both everyday tool and amplifier of risk; divorce as both rupture and recalibration; gender mainstreaming as both normative aspiration and strategic practice; food distribution as both relief and contestation; apology as both moral language and diplomatic technology. The diversity of methods in this issue—survey research, ethnography, qualitative interviewing, document and discourse analysis, and time-series approaches—also reflects a healthy pluralism. No single method owns the truth of a social problem; each sharpens a different edge of it.

    We are grateful to the authors for the care visible in their scholarship and to the reviewers whose labor, often anonymous and always substantial, helps this journal remain a place where arguments are strengthened rather than merely displayed. We hope this issue meets you in a reflective moment—end of year, but not end of questions—and offers both insight and usable language for the work ahead.

    Best regards,

     Asep Iqbal

     

     

     

     

  • Journal of Asian Social Science Research
    Vol. 7 No. 1 (2025)

    Editors' Preface
    JASSR, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2025

    We are pleased to present Volume 7, Number 1, 2025 of the Journal of Asian Social Science Research (JASSR), a collection that brings together critical, timely, and diverse scholarship from across Asia and beyond. This issue offers a multidisciplinary lens on the pressing social issues shaping contemporary societies, exploring themes that span education and migration, conflict and resilience, historical memory and international relations, digital transformation, and cross-cultural learning.

    The issue opens with a timely study by Mehrad et al., which delves into the experiences of international students in Spain navigating academic pressures in an increasingly digitalized educational landscape. The authors provide a compelling examination of how artificial intelligence tools can serve both as aids and obstacles—alleviating educational stress while raising ethical concerns around dependency, critical thinking, and academic integrity. Their findings speak to the importance of thoughtful and ethical technology integration in higher education.

    From the digital classroom, we move to the precarious edges of urban life in the Philippines. Ancho and colleagues investigate the migration histories and living conditions of informal settler families along the railway lines in Los Baños. The study reveals a cycle of vulnerability exacerbated by systemic urban planning failures, yet it also highlights resilience forged through community solidarity. The authors’ call for inclusive and participatory relocation policies is especially urgent amid intensifying urban inequality across Southeast Asia.

    In India, Barman revisits one of the country's longest-running internal conflicts: the Naxalite insurgency. Through a historical and structural analysis, the paper critiques the state's predominantly militarized response and argues for a more comprehensive strategy that includes development and political dialogue. This contribution is a sobering reminder of how deep-seated inequality, if left unaddressed, continues to erode democratic institutions and social stability.

    History and cooperation are the focus of Yanuardi Syukur’s review of Indonesia-Malaysia relations. By tracing a shared colonial past rooted in the spice trade and the strategic Strait of Malacca, the paper argues that cultural and historical affinities offer untapped potential for regional cooperation. In a time of growing geopolitical shifts and regional integration, this essay invites readers to revisit history not as a source of division, but as a bridge to a common future. The fifth article by Hasanah et al. explores the transformative power of language learning in shaping perceptions of society. Focusing on Indonesian students studying Korean, the research demonstrates how increased linguistic and cultural proficiency correlates with deeper understanding of South Korean social issues. The findings suggest that language education is not merely instrumental—it is a pathway to empathy, intercultural awareness, and critical global citizenship.

    Finally, Fjellrik and Blikstad-Balas offer a poignant narrative study of Afghan female teachers who continued their professional journeys amidst the Taliban’s return to power. What emerges is a deeply textured account of how male support—both progressive and paradoxical—shaped women's educational resilience in patriarchal settings. Grounded in critical pedagogy and feminist theory, this paper is a powerful testament to resistance, relational agency, and the enduring importance of education in conflict zones.

    Together, the articles in this issue affirm the journal’s mission: to provide a platform for empirically grounded, theoretically rich, and socially relevant research that advances understanding of Asia’s diverse social realities. We extend our gratitude to the authors, reviewers, and editorial team whose rigorous work made this volume possible. May this issue inspire critical reflection, scholarly dialogue, and actionable insight for readers across disciplines and regions.

    Best regards,
    Asep Iqbal

  • Journal of Asian Social Science Research
    Vol. 6 No. 2 (2024)

    Editors' Preface
    JASSR, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2024

    Journal of Asian Social Science Research (JASSR)     continues to serve as a platform for rigorous interdisciplinary scholarship that examines the diverse social, cultural, and legal dynamics shaping Asian societies. This issue, Volume 6, Number 2, showcases a diverse range of studies that address key contemporary challenges and transformations within Asia, from ethnic identity contestations and cultural negotiations with modernity to the intersections of law, gender, and public perceptions in governance. Each article in this issue offers critical insights into the complexities of social structures and human agency in their respective contexts, contributing to a deeper understanding of Asian societies in flux. 

    The first article by Rajmoni Singha examines the contentious dynamics of ethnic identity construction in Bangladesh, focusing on the Manipuri and Bishnupriya communities. Through a meticulous qualitative approach, Singha illuminates how identity claims—shaped by linguistic, cultural, and historical distinctions—become sites of tension and contestation. This study not only highlights the challenges faced by the Manipuri community in preserving their ethnic identity but also addresses broader questions about the politics of recognition and minority rights in South Asia. 

    Next, Didin Nurul Rosidin and co-authors present an in-depth exploration of Benda Kerep village in Cirebon, Indonesia, as it navigates the pressures of modernity while maintaining its rich cultural heritage. Employing a historical and descriptive-analytical framework, the study uncovers the community’s adaptive strategies, from integrating modern education systems to embracing new technologies within traditional rituals. This duality underscores the nuanced ways in which local communities negotiate the demands of modernization while preserving cultural continuity. 

    Siti Muflichah’s contribution offers a feminist critique of the structural inequities faced by female academics in Indonesian Islamic higher education institutions. Drawing on postcolonial feminist theory, the study vividly portrays the resilience of Indonesian Muslim women scholars as they contend with systemic gender biases, cultural expectations, and the constraints of new managerialism. The findings provide a poignant call to address these entrenched disparities and pave the way for more equitable academic practices and leadership opportunities. 

    In a timely and critical legal analysis, Hartato Pakpahan and colleagues propose reforms to Indonesia’s narcotics law from a humanist perspective. By juxtaposing the punitive approaches of Indonesia’s current legal framework with rehabilitative models from countries such as the Netherlands and Portugal, the authors argue for a shift toward restorative justice and social rehabilitation. This article contributes to the ongoing debate about drug policy reform, highlighting the need for laws that balance public health, social equity, and justice in addressing personal drug misuse. 

    Finally, Maskur and colleagues delve into the symbolic-compliance gap in the enforcement of Sharia law in Aceh, Indonesia. Focusing on the perspectives of becak drivers, the study unveils the dissonance between the symbolic authority of religious law and its practical enforcement. The proposed theory of Symbolic-Compliance Dynamics enriches the discourse on religious governance, highlighting the necessity of community-centered approaches that prioritize fairness, consistency, and meaningful moral education. 

    Together, these articles exemplify the rich diversity of Asian social science research and the critical importance of interdisciplinary inquiry in addressing the region’s pressing social, cultural, and legal challenges. The editors are confident that this issue will inspire further scholarship and dialogue, fostering a deeper appreciation for the complexities and nuances of Asian societies. 

    We extend our gratitude to the authors for their contributions and to the reviewers for their invaluable insights and dedication to upholding the journal’s academic rigor. 

    The editorial team hopes that readers find the articles both enlightening and inspiring, and that they enjoy engaging with the rich scholarship presented in this volume.

    Best regards,
    Asep Iqbal

     

     

  • Journal of Asian Social Science Research
    Vol. 6 No. 1 (2024)

    Editors' Preface

    JASSR, Vol. 6, No. 1, 2024

    Journal of Asian Social Science Research (JASSR) continues its mission to spotlight diverse, interdisciplinary research across Asia with its first issue of 2024. This edition features a range of studies that not only address pressing regional concerns but also contribute to broader global debates. From the implications of digital labor to the geopolitics of renewable energy, the articles in this volume reflect the dynamic interplay between local contexts and global systems, offering rich insights and actionable recommendations.

    The opening article “Short Video Entrepreneurship among Smallholder Farmers in the Era of Digital Intelligence: An Exploration of Labour Alienation” by Yuying Li, delves into the nuanced challenges faced by smallholder farmers in China who embrace digital entrepreneurship. Drawing on a digital labor alienation framework, this study critically examines the impact of algorithmic manipulation and digital inequalities on farmers' autonomy and identity. By highlighting the unintended consequences of digital platforms on marginalized communities, the research underscores the need for equitable and inclusive technological innovation in rural development.

    The integration of climate education into formal and informal learning systems is explored in “Mitigating Climate Crisis: Integrating Climate Education into Educational System for Social Welfare Enhancement in Indonesia” by Leonyta Anggun Nugroho and Muhammad Raafi. This study proposes a comprehensive framework for embedding climate education into Indonesia’s educational institutions, emphasizing its potential to foster resilience and enhance social welfare, particularly for vulnerable communities. The article advocates for interactive, action-oriented approaches to climate learning, highlighting the transformative role of universities in driving sustainability efforts and empowering future leaders.

    Energy geopolitics takes center stage in “Geopolitics of Laos Renewable Energy and the Development of Water Energy for the Integrated Southeast Asia's Electricity” by Bevita Sari and Ramaldy Krisna Indradipradana. The authors investigate Laos' strategic positioning in the Southeast Asian renewable energy market, focusing on its hydropower initiatives. The study illustrates how Laos leverages both regional and international partnerships to mitigate energy poverty while fostering sustainable development. By situating these findings within the broader context of renewable energy geopolitics, the article provides valuable insights into the intersections of policy, technology, and community engagement.

    Duyen Thi Nguyen and Thuy Thanh Dao’s article, “Factors Influencing Community Resource Mobilization to Support Households in Achieving Sustainable Poverty Alleviation: The Case of Dao People in Thanh Hoa Province, Vietnam,” examines the dual influences of internal and external factors in resource mobilization for poverty alleviation. Through a detailed analysis of Dao households, this research sheds light on how education, skills, and physical capital interact with state and non-governmental support to drive sustainable outcomes. The study offers a critical perspective on community-driven development and its role in addressing persistent poverty in Asia.

    Addressing the intersection of gender and labor, “Childcare Centre Facilities and their Impact on the Performance of Working Mothers in Dhaka, Bangladesh” by Nahida Shaulin explores how access to childcare facilities shapes the productivity and well-being of employed mothers in urban Bangladesh. The findings underscore the significant relationship between childcare availability and job performance, highlighting the need for policy reforms to support working mothers. This article contributes to ongoing conversations on women's empowerment and workforce equity, emphasizing childcare as a pivotal factor in balancing professional and personal responsibilities.

    Together, the articles in this issue reflect the diversity and depth of contemporary social science research in Asia. By addressing challenges such as digital inequality, climate change, renewable energy, poverty alleviation, and gender equity, the authors advance scholarship that is not only regionally grounded but also globally resonant. JASSR remains committed to fostering academic dialogue and producing research that bridges disciplines and geographies, offering fresh perspectives on the complex issues shaping our world.

    The editorial team wishes readers an enlightening and inspiring experience as they explore the insightful scholarship featured in this volume.

    Best regards,
    Asep Iqbal

  • Journal of Asian Social Science Research
    Vol. 5 No. 2 (2023)

    Editors’ Preface
    JASSR, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2023

    It is our pleasure to present Journal of Asian Social Science Research (JASSR), Volume 5, Number 2, 2023. The six articles brought together in this issue reflect both the breadth and the immediacy of contemporary social science scholarship on Asia. Considered collectively, they show that Asian societies continue to be shaped by ongoing negotiations over power, identity, justice, governance, markets, education, religion, and everyday life. At the same time, they demonstrate the value of scholarship that moves across disciplinary boundaries while remaining closely attentive to the lived realities that structure human experience across the region.

    One of the strongest threads running through this issue concerns the making and unmaking of political authority. The opening article, which compares populism in India’s Aam Aadmi Party and Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, shows how populism can serve as an effective political strategy while also producing a persistent gap between rhetorical promise and practical delivery. This concern with legitimacy and political perception continues in the article on public views of Rodrigo Duterte’s leadership in the Philippines, which explores why endorsement and criticism may coexist within a complex and shifting political landscape. Read together, these contributions remind us that political life in Asia cannot be understood solely through formal institutions or electoral outcomes. It is also shaped by rhetoric, affect, civic response, and the uneven conversion of political claims into social reality.

    A second important theme in this issue is the persistence of exclusion within societies that formally affirm diversity. The article on Indonesia’s Chinese minority revisits the tension between the national ideal of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika and the historical realities of discrimination, scapegoating, and violence. Drawing on Johan Galtung’s framework of direct, structural, and cultural violence, the article argues that legislative reform and surface-level social accommodation are not, in themselves, sufficient. What remains necessary is a deeper process of reconciliation, recognition, and mutual understanding. In this sense, the article speaks not only to the Indonesian case, but also to a wider question that resonates across many plural societies, namely how communities confront historical injury, entrenched prejudice, and the unfinished demands of justice.

    This issue also illustrates the continuing relevance of social science for questions situated at the intersection of institutions and everyday welfare. The article comparing the expectation disconfirmation, ideal point, and Kano models of customer satisfaction may appear methodologically distinct from the more explicitly political contributions, yet it makes an equally significant intervention. By examining e-commerce data from a beauty shop, the study shows how different analytical models reveal different strengths and limitations in explaining satisfaction and consumer judgement. Its presence in this issue usefully expands the journal’s scope, reminding us that rigorous social inquiry is equally capable of illuminating the patterned evaluations that shape everyday economic life.

    The final two articles turn our attention to Afghanistan, where questions of education, gender, family, and moral order remain especially urgent. The article on women’s rights to education under the Taliban offers a sobering account of how political rule can profoundly restrict girls’ and women’s access to schooling, particularly where structural and cultural barriers reinforce one another. Alongside this, the study of family lifestyle in Firoz-Koh City explores how families interpret and embody Qur’anic teachings in their daily lives across religious, moral, social, and intellectual dimensions. Although different in focus and method, both articles make a shared and important point. They show that education and family are never merely private matters, because they are among the central arenas through which authority, values, dignity, and the future of communities are negotiated.

    Taken as a whole, this issue offers a rich portrait of Asian social realities in motion. Its articles move across different national settings and substantive concerns, yet they converge in demonstrating that social life is always mediated by institutions, histories, norms, and competing visions of collective well-being. In a time marked by democratic tensions, unresolved inequalities, market transformation, and renewed debate over culture, morality, and belonging, the contributions gathered here invite us to think comparatively, critically, and with care.

    As editors, we are encouraged by the intellectual range and seriousness of the work represented in these pages. The articles in this issue not only deepen our understanding of particular contexts, but also remind us of the enduring value of social science scholarship that is empirically grounded, theoretically engaged, and responsive to the complexities of lived experience. We hope this issue will foster further reflection and dialogue among scholars, students, and readers concerned with the changing contours of social life in Asia.

    We extend our sincere gratitude to the authors for their thoughtful contributions, to the reviewers for their time and scholarly generosity, and to our readers for sustaining this shared space of inquiry. It is our hope that this issue will not only inform ongoing academic conversations, but also encourage deeper engagement with the questions of power, justice, and human dignity that continue to shape societies across the region.

    Best regards,
    Asep Iqbal

     

  • Journal of Asian Social Science Research
    Vol. 5 No. 1 (2023)

    Editors’ Preface
    JASSR, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2023

    It is with great pleasure that we present Journal of Asian Social Science Research (JASSR), Volume 5, Number 1, 2023. This issue brings together a compelling set of contributions that, while diverse in subject matter and geographical focus, are united by a common intellectual concern: how people, communities, and institutions negotiate questions of belonging, recognition, dignity, and power in rapidly changing social worlds.

    The articles gathered in this issue remind us that contemporary Asia cannot be read through narrow categories or simplified oppositions. The realities examined here are shaped by layered histories, contested identities, unequal structures, and enduring struggles over inclusion and justice. In that sense, this issue speaks not only to regional concerns, but also to broader debates in social science about how societies define membership, manage difference, and imagine collective futures.

    Several contributions turn our attention to communities whose experiences are too often marginalized, misunderstood, or left outside dominant narratives. The article on Indonesian atheists, for instance, raises thoughtful and necessary questions about citizenship, morality, and public belonging in a context where religion continues to occupy a central place in national life. By foregrounding voices that are rarely heard in mainstream discourse, the article invites readers to reflect on whether democratic coexistence can be sustained through a civic ethic grounded in shared humanity rather than religious conformity alone.

    A similar concern with exclusion and recognition animates the article on the Hazara community in Afghanistan. Here, education emerges not simply as a developmental issue, but as a profoundly social and political one, closely tied to security, equality, access, and human dignity. The article offers a sobering account of structural barriers faced by a minority community, while also revealing forms of persistence, participation, and aspiration that complicate any reading of the Hazara experience as one of victimhood alone.

    Questions of power and inequality also take shape in the issue’s engagement with gender. The article on misogynistic culture in South Korea provides an important reminder that gender injustice is never merely a matter of isolated attitudes or individual prejudice. Rather, it is sustained through historical narratives, institutional arrangements, and cultural logics that continue to shape social expectations and political discourse in the present. In bringing these deeper structures into view, the article contributes meaningfully to wider conversations on patriarchy, modernity, and the unfinished work of gender justice.

    The issue also offers a valuable conceptual contribution through its discussion of Indonesian Muslim communities in Western countries. By approaching diaspora through the lens of voluntary mobility, self-organization, and transnational identity, the article broadens established understandings of diasporic life and challenges more restrictive frameworks that emphasize displacement alone. Its significance lies not only in its empirical focus, but also in its invitation to rethink how mobility, belonging, and religious identity are lived and negotiated across national boundaries.

    At the level of interstate relations, the article on India and Bangladesh offers a careful reflection on more than five decades of bilateral engagement. It demonstrates that relations between neighbouring states are shaped not only by diplomacy and strategic interests, but also by memory, interdependence, political will, and the persistent need to manage both cooperation and tension. Read alongside the other contributions in this issue, the article reinforces a central insight that runs throughout the volume, namely that all social and political relations, whether between individuals, communities, or states, are shaped by histories of power and by the continual work of negotiation.

    What gives this issue its coherence is not thematic uniformity, but a shared attentiveness to the lived consequences of social structures and political arrangements. The articles assembled here approach their subjects from different angles, yet together they illuminate how identities are formed, contested, and defended within settings marked by asymmetry, vulnerability, and change. They also show the continued relevance of social science scholarship that is historically informed, conceptually alert, and ethically attentive to the worlds it seeks to understand.

    As editors, we are especially encouraged by the breadth and seriousness of the work represented in these pages. At a time when public life is increasingly shaped by polarization, simplification, and exclusionary rhetoric, the articles in this issue offer something both intellectually rigorous and deeply needed: careful analysis, comparative sensitivity, and an openness to complexity. They remind us that scholarship matters not only because it explains the world, but also because it can deepen our capacity to listen, to question, and to imagine more just forms of social life.

    We therefore commend this issue to our readers with gratitude and hope. We are grateful to the authors for their thoughtful contributions, to the reviewers for their care and intellectual generosity, and to our readers for sustaining this shared space of inquiry. We hope that the articles in this volume will not only inform ongoing scholarly conversations, but also inspire further reflection on the many ways people across Asia and beyond continue to negotiate identity, justice, and belonging in an unsettled world.

    Best regards,
    Asep Iqbal

  • Journal of Asian Social Science Research
    Vol. 4 No. 2 (2022)

    Editors’ Preface
    JASSR, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2022

    It is a pleasure to present Journal of Asian Social Science Research (JASSR) Volume 4, Number 2, 2022. The five articles assembled in this issue reflect the breadth of contemporary social science inquiry while remaining closely attentive to questions that are urgent, grounded, and deeply human, including youth vulnerability, educational transformation, local empowerment, religious change, and democratic fragility. Together, they remind us that the study of Asian and adjacent social worlds is most illuminating when it moves carefully between institutions and lived experience, between structural change and the moral texture of everyday life.

    One of the strengths of this issue lies in its sustained attention to the conditions under which individuals and communities navigate uncertainty. The opening study, on risky behaviours among first-year university students in South Africa, examines how personality traits and gender differences shape patterns of conduct at a formative stage of young adulthood. Read alongside the article on online classrooms in Bangladesh during the COVID-19 pandemic, it invites a broader reflection on how education is never merely instructional. It is also social, affective, and institutional, shaped by questions of access, support, adaptation, and risk. In different ways, both contributions illuminate the pressures facing young people as they encounter transition, vulnerability, and the demands of rapidly changing environments.

    The Bangladesh article, in particular, captures a moment that was globally shared yet unevenly experienced. By examining how teachers and students perceived the sudden shift to online learning, and by highlighting questions of connectivity, institutional support, social interaction, and pedagogical quality, the study offers an important contribution to the social understanding of education under crisis. Its significance extends beyond the immediate pandemic context, because it speaks to enduring concerns in developing-country settings about infrastructure, equity, and the meaning of meaningful participation in educational life.

    A different but equally important form of social response emerges in the article on the Juang Community of Lebak, Indonesia. Focusing on honey bee cultivation as a form of local food innovation and community mobilization, the article shows how grassroots initiatives can serve as vehicles of empowerment, resource development, and collective aspiration. At the same time, it does not romanticize local action. By noting the movement’s difficulties in building wider collaboration and institutional support, the study offers a measured account of how community-based innovation often depends on networks, trust, and the uneven capacity of different actors to work together.

    Questions of continuity and transformation are taken up with particular sensitivity in the article on the Wetu Telu community in Lombok. Through a phenomenological and interdisciplinary approach, the study explores how religious life is shaped through historical transition, cultural blending, and the long dialectic between local belief systems and the arrival of major religious traditions. Its contribution is especially valuable because it resists reductive labels. Rather than treating local religiosity as either deviation or residue, the article shows it as a lived and historically layered formation, embedded in the socio-cultural and socio-political dynamics of Sasak society.

    The final article turns from community and culture to the wider arena of regional politics, examining India’s role in the restoration of democracy in the Maldives. By situating Maldivian democratic development within a field marked by domestic instability, weak institutions, external influence, and strategic competition, the article reminds us that democracy is never secured by constitutional form alone. It is shaped by judicial credibility, political leadership, regional alignments, and the delicate interplay between sovereignty and intervention. In bringing South Asian international relations into the issue, this contribution expands the volume’s horizon while remaining connected to a shared concern with how fragile social and political orders are negotiated under pressure.

    Taken together, the articles in this issue offer a compelling portrait of societies confronting transition from multiple vantage points. Whether the subject is student behaviour, digital education, local social movements, religious-cultural formation, or democratic restoration, each contribution reveals how social life is organized through a dynamic interplay of structure, agency, and historical context. What emerges is not a single narrative, but a set of carefully drawn inquiries that enrich our understanding of how people and institutions respond to change, disruption, and possibility.

    As editors, we are grateful for the range and seriousness of the scholarship represented in these pages. We hope this issue will be read not only as a collection of discrete studies, but also as an invitation to think more patiently and more generously about the varied social realities that shape our world. We extend our sincere thanks to the authors for their thoughtful work, to the reviewers for their care and intellectual generosity, and to our readers for sustaining this journal as a shared space of inquiry, reflection, and conversation.

    Best regards,
    Asep Iqbal

  • Journal of Asian Social Science Research
    Vol. 4 No. 1 (2022)

    Editors’ Preface
    JASSR, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2022

    It is with great pleasure that we present Journal of Asian Social Science Research (JASSR) Volume 4, Number 1, 2022. The five articles gathered in this issue speak to the intellectual range and public relevance of contemporary social science scholarship, while also sharing a deeper concern with the ways power is imagined, organized, contested, and lived across Asian societies and beyond.

    What lends this issue its coherence is not a single theme in the narrow sense, but a common commitment to examining how dominant orders sustain themselves and how they may be questioned. Across debates on technology, education, law, religion, social movements, and democracy, the contributions assembled here show that institutions and ideas acquire meaning only in relation to history, culture, and lived experience. In this respect, the issue offers not simply a set of case studies, but a broader invitation to think more carefully about how social worlds are shaped by both visible structures and quieter forms of exclusion and control.

    The opening article sets a reflective and intellectually ambitious tone by challenging several persistent centrisms in social media research, including technocentrism, online data centrism, moment centrism, novelty centrism, and success centrism. Its call for greater historical depth, interdisciplinarity, and analytical complexity is especially significant because it reminds us that social inquiry must resist easy fascination with the new when that fascination obscures the longer trajectories and deeper social relations that give technology its meaning. In many ways, this methodological intervention resonates throughout the issue, since each of the articles that follow also asks us to look beneath surface appearances and attend to the structures that shape public life.

    This concern with what lies beneath official rhetoric is especially visible in the article on school leadership in multicultural Indonesia. While school leaders may express commitment to diversity and moral leadership, the study shows that practices within schools can still reproduce domination through covertly discriminatory policies and the strategic use of cultural and religious identities. Read alongside the socio-legal inquiry into adat courts, the article underscores a larger point that formal recognition alone is never sufficient. Whether in schools or in legal systems, the challenge is not only to acknowledge plurality, but to protect it in ways that are substantively just and socially meaningful.

    Questions of historical agency and collective resistance are taken up in the study of Muslim social movements in Cirebon in the early twentieth century. By recovering the role of organizations such as Sarekat Islam, Persarekatan Ulama, Nahdlatul Ulama, and Muhammadiyah in shaping new forms of anti-colonial resistance, the article adds important texture to our understanding of how religious and social mobilization contributed to the emergence of broader nationalist consciousness. Here again, the issue asks readers to see history not as a fixed backdrop, but as a dynamic field in which communities interpret changing conditions and devise new strategies of action.

    The issue closes with a sobering reflection on the condition of democracy in contemporary India. By examining growing intolerance, attacks on minorities, the narrowing of civic and media space, and the pressure of majoritarian politics under the Modi era, the article raises questions that reach far beyond one national context. It reminds us that democracy cannot be measured by electoral procedure alone, because its vitality also depends on pluralism, protection of rights, and the preservation of spaces in which disagreement and difference can endure without fear.

    Taken together, the articles in this issue offer a rich and thoughtful portrait of societies negotiating authority, diversity, memory, and justice under changing conditions. They move across different subjects and scales of analysis, yet converge in showing that social research is at its strongest when it is historically attentive, conceptually alert, and ethically responsive to the worlds it seeks to understand.

    As editors, we are grateful for the care, seriousness, and range of the scholarship represented in these pages. We hope this issue will be read not only as a contribution to ongoing academic conversation, but also as an invitation to reflect more deeply on the fragile, contested, and profoundly human character of social life. We extend our sincere thanks to the authors for their thoughtful work, to the reviewers for their generosity and discernment, and to our readers for sustaining this journal as a shared space of inquiry, reflection, and dialogue.

    Best regards,
    Asep Iqbal

     

  • Journal of Asian Social Science Research
    Vol. 3 No. 2 (2021)

    Editors’ Preface
    JASSR, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2021

    It is with great pleasure that we present Journal of Asian Social Science Research (JASSR) Volume 3, Number 2, 2021. The articles gathered in this issue speak to a moment of profound disruption, but they do so with analytical clarity, empirical care, and a sustained concern for the human consequences of institutional and technological change.

    Taken together, the contributions in this volume offer a compelling portrait of societies responding to crisis while being reshaped by longer transformations in governance, communication, labour, and everyday life. Although the pandemic forms an important backdrop to several of the articles, the issue is not defined by emergency alone. Rather, it reveals how moments of crisis often bring into sharper view the deeper structures through which inequality, adaptation, power, and social creativity are organized.

    A central thread running through this issue concerns the question of institutional capacity and public response. The article on overseas training and the performance of the Bangladesh Civil Service examines how professional development may strengthen the quality of public administration, while also exposing the policy and management limitations that prevent such efforts from reaching their full potential. In a different but related register, the article on the COVID-19 infodemic in Indonesia reminds us that governance today involves not only administrative action, but also the difficult task of navigating complex information environments in which misinformation circulates across micro, meso, and macro levels of society. Read together, these contributions show that effective public institutions depend not simply on formal authority, but also on learning, coordination, systems thinking, and the cultivation of trust.

    This issue also gives welcome attention to vulnerability, inclusion, and the ethics of public policy. The literature review on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people with intellectual disabilities offers a timely and necessary reminder that crisis responses are never neutral in their effects. Policies designed without adequate attention to disability risk reproducing exclusion precisely where protection is most needed. By foregrounding access to education, healthcare, and public services, the article calls for a more inclusive understanding of wellbeing and rights, and in doing so expands the moral and analytical horizon of the issue as a whole.

    Another notable strength of this volume lies in its exploration of how digital technologies reorganize social and economic life in uneven ways. The study of small and medium enterprises in Depok highlights the adaptive potential of digital platforms in sustaining community networks of consumption during the pandemic. It shows how entrepreneurial actors mobilize technology not merely as a tool of transaction, but as a means of building shared taste, connection, and economic continuity under conditions of restriction and uncertainty. Yet this promise of digital adaptation is held in productive tension with the article on YouTube content creators, which offers a more critical account of digital capitalism by tracing the alienation experienced by creators whose labour generates value in systems that distribute reward unequally. Together, these articles remind us that the digital sphere is never a neutral space. It is a site of opportunity and asymmetry, creativity and extraction, visibility and dispossession.

    What gives this issue its coherence, then, is a shared attentiveness to the changing relationship between institutions, technologies, and human agency. Whether the focus is civil service reform, pandemic misinformation, disability inclusion, small business resilience, or digital labour, each contribution examines how social actors navigate systems that are at once enabling and constraining. The issue therefore offers more than a set of discrete case studies. It presents a broader reflection on how contemporary societies manage uncertainty, distribute resources, and negotiate dignity in environments increasingly shaped by both crisis and connectivity.

    As editors, we are especially encouraged by the range and seriousness of the scholarship represented in these pages. The articles in this issue are united by a commitment to socially grounded inquiry, and they demonstrate the continuing importance of research that is empirically attentive, conceptually thoughtful, and responsive to the lived realities of our time.

    We hope readers will find in this volume not only valuable analyses of particular cases, but also a deeper invitation to think across fields, scales, and experiences. In that spirit, we extend our sincere thanks to the authors for their thoughtful contributions, to the reviewers for their care and intellectual generosity, and to our readers for sustaining this journal as a shared space of reflection, dialogue, and scholarly engagement.

    Best regards,

    Asep Iqbal

  • Journal of Asian Social Science Research
    Vol. 3 No. 1 (2021)

    Editors’ Preface
    JASSR, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2021

    It is with great pleasure that we present Journal of Asian Social Science Research (JASSR) Volume 3, Number 1, 2021. The articles gathered in this issue reflect the intellectual range and public relevance of contemporary social science scholarship, while also revealing a distinctive coherence. Taken together, they examine how religion, governance, education, environment, and democratic life are being reconfigured under conditions of social change. Although varied in focus and method, the contributions share a common concern with the ways institutions, ideas, and collective practices shape the everyday horizons within which people negotiate authority, identity, responsibility, and belonging.

    A notable strength of this issue lies in its attention to Indonesia as a dynamic site of social inquiry. Several articles explore questions that are deeply local in their empirical grounding, yet far broader in their conceptual significance. The opening contribution on environmental challenges and the social study of religion invites readers to reconsider the relationship between religion and ecology not as a fixed moral resource, but as a complex and socially constructed field marked by ambivalence, plurality, and practical tension. In doing so, it offers an important point of departure for the issue as a whole. It reminds us that social life is rarely governed by singular logics. Rather, it unfolds through competing voices, layered meanings, and the constant negotiation between norm and practice.

    This concern with the contested social life of religion continues in the article on the symbolism of hijab within the Tarbiyah movement in Indonesia. By examining how dress becomes a site of ideological control, gendered discipline, and political symbolism, the article offers a careful account of the relationship between Islamic conservatism and women’s agency. Yet it also points toward the possibility of rearticulation and resistance, showing how feminist engagement may enable women to detach themselves from restrictive meanings and reconstruct the terms through which religious identity is lived. Read alongside the article on religious moderation in higher education, this contribution highlights a central question for contemporary Indonesia, namely how religious life can be negotiated in ways that preserve dignity, plurality, and democratic coexistence in the face of rising pressures toward exclusion and uniformity.

    Questions of governance and public authority form another important thread in this issue. The article on the involvement of the Indonesian National Armed Forces in the Citarum Harum project raises a timely and analytically significant question about the boundaries of military participation in civilian affairs. By placing the case within the broader discourse of water governance, the study shows how democratic ideals of participation and civilian oversight may be strained when environmental management is recast through the language of security. Its argument is especially valuable because it pushes readers to think beyond administrative effectiveness alone and to consider the kinds of political regimes and governing assumptions that are normalized when urgent public problems are addressed through exceptional institutional actors.

    A related concern with state legitimacy and public trust appears in the article on political participation in the 2020 West Sumatra regional election. Set against the constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic and the province’s high vulnerability index, the study explores how public legitimacy was built and maintained in a moment of democratic uncertainty. Its findings point to the importance of coordinated action among local government, election participants, and electoral institutions in restoring confidence and encouraging participation. In this respect, the article offers more than a case study of one election. It speaks to a broader democratic question that remains pressing across many settings, namely how trust in public institutions is cultivated when crisis conditions threaten to deepen civic distance and political hesitation.

    The issue also turns, with welcome seriousness, to the transformation of education in an age increasingly shaped by digital mediation and social disruption. The article on the social dimensions of education in the era of the Internet of Things and during the COVID-19 pandemic examines how technological change affects not only modes of delivery, but also the social intelligence embedded in teaching and learning processes. Its emphasis on social sensitivity, social insight, and social communication usefully reminds us that education is never simply a matter of infrastructure or content transmission. It is also relational, affective, and deeply social. This insight resonates strongly with the article on higher education and the religious moderation program, which situates universities as important actors in supporting a more inclusive and tolerant public culture. Together, these two contributions show that higher education occupies a critical space in the shaping of both civic competence and moral imagination.

    What emerges from this issue, then, is a rich portrait of a society negotiating multiple transitions at once. Environmental anxiety, religious contestation, technological disruption, institutional trust, and democratic participation are not presented here as isolated themes. They are shown instead as interconnected domains of social life, each revealing how public institutions and lived experience meet, and sometimes collide, in moments of change. This is precisely where social science proves most valuable, because it enables us to see complexity without losing sight of the human stakes involved.

    As editors, we are encouraged by the seriousness, range, and timeliness of the scholarship represented in these pages. We hope this issue will be read not only as a collection of individual studies, but also as a thoughtful contribution to ongoing conversations about how societies respond to uncertainty while seeking more just, reflective, and humane forms of common life. We extend our sincere thanks to the authors for their work, to the reviewers for their care and generosity, and to our readers for sustaining this journal as a shared space of inquiry, reflection, and dialogue.

    Best Regards,

    Asep Iqbal

  • Journal of Asian Social Science Research
    Vol. 2 No. 2 (2020)

    Editors’ Preface
    JASSR, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2020

    It is with great pleasure that we present Journal of Asian Social Science Research (JASSR) Volume 2, Number 2, 2020. The articles gathered in this issue reflect the vitality and range of contemporary social science scholarship, while also speaking to a set of concerns that are both intellectually significant and publicly urgent. Read together, these contributions offer a richly textured account of how power is organized, contested, and lived across modern and historical settings, particularly through religion, electoral politics, gendered institutions, and colonial knowledge.

    What gives this issue its coherence is not thematic uniformity, but a shared attentiveness to the ways authority takes shape in social life. Across the articles, authority appears not as a fixed possession of the state or of formal institutions alone, but as something continually negotiated through political mobilization, public narratives, religious networks, everyday hierarchies, and inherited cultural forms. In this respect, the issue as a whole invites readers to consider how legitimacy is built, how it is challenged, and how it is sustained through practices that are at once symbolic and material.

    Several contributions in this volume engage directly with the changing relationship between Islam and politics in contemporary Indonesia. The article on the political crossover of Islamic conservatism in the 2019 presidential election offers an important analysis of the post-212 landscape, showing how religious activism, social grievance, and political aspiration converged in the construction of an imagined ummah. Its significance lies not only in its account of electoral mobilization, but also in its broader insight that contemporary Islamic activism cannot be understood solely in theological terms. It is equally shaped by dissatisfaction with governance, perceptions of injustice, and the search for moral and political community. This concern with democratic contestation is taken further in the article on local elections in post-Suharto Indonesia, which examines the emergence of new political dynamics through pilkada, including coalition-building, local strongmen, business interests, political consultants, and voter disengagement. Together, these two articles capture the promise and complexity of Indonesia’s democratic transformation, where expanded participation has opened new opportunities for representation while also generating new arenas of competition, brokerage, and political improvisation.

    The issue also turns, with admirable care, to questions of gender, voice, and institutional inequality. The narrative inquiry into the experiences of Muslim women academics in Indonesian state Islamic higher education offers a quietly powerful intervention into the study of higher education and gender. By foregrounding the lived experiences of women navigating unequal structures of academic advancement, the article reveals how institutional barriers continue to shape careers, recognition, and access to leadership. Its contribution is especially valuable because it restores human depth to a problem too often described only in statistical or administrative terms. Read alongside the article on the women of Tablighi Jamaat in Pesantren Al-Fatah, the issue presents a more nuanced picture of Muslim women’s roles within religious institutions and movements. While one article highlights gendered constraints within academic life, the other shows women’s active participation in organizing and expanding religious propagation through masturah networks under highly structured conditions. Considered together, these studies resist simplistic assumptions about Muslim women as either passive subjects or fully emancipated actors. Instead, they reveal lives shaped by negotiation, discipline, commitment, and agency within complex institutional worlds.

    Historical depth is provided by the final article, which examines Haji Hasan Mustapa’s Malay guidebook on etiquette for Acehnese people in their dealings with the Dutch colonial authorities. This contribution offers a particularly illuminating reminder that colonial power was exercised not only through force and administration, but also through efforts to regulate conduct, speech, and notions of civility. By tracing how native officials were enlisted in the production of colonial etiquette, the article draws attention to the subtle politics of cultural mediation and the moral language of empire. Its inclusion in this issue broadens the temporal horizon of the volume and enriches its central concern with authority by showing how projects of rule are often embedded in seemingly ordinary practices of instruction and behaviour.

    Taken as a whole, this issue offers a compelling reflection on the many arenas in which social and political order is made. Elections, academic institutions, religious communities, and colonial texts may appear quite different in scale and character, yet each of the articles demonstrates that power is never merely imposed from above. It is interpreted, enacted, contested, and reproduced through networks of meaning and practice that deserve close and careful attention. That, in many ways, is the enduring strength of social science, that it helps us see how large structures become real in lived experience, and how human actors respond to them with creativity, accommodation, resistance, and hope.

    As editors, we are grateful for the range, seriousness, and intellectual generosity represented in these pages. We hope this issue will be read not only as a collection of strong individual studies, but also as a thoughtful contribution to wider conversations about democracy, religion, gender, history, and the changing forms of social authority in Asia and beyond. We extend our sincere thanks to the authors for their scholarship, to the reviewers for their care and discernment, and to our readers for sustaining this journal as a shared space of inquiry, reflection, and dialogue.

    Best regards,
    Asep Iqbal

  • Journal of Asian Social Science Research
    Vol. 2 No. 1 (2020)

    Editors’ Preface
    JASSR, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2020

    It is with great pleasure that we present Journal of Asian Social Science Research (JASSR) Volume 2, Number 1, 2020. The articles assembled in this issue reflect the breadth and seriousness of contemporary social science scholarship while sharing a deeper common concern: how communities respond to inequality, negotiate authority, and articulate claims to dignity, justice, and social transformation. Read together, these contributions offer a thoughtful and compelling account of societies shaped by historical wounds, contested identities, religious reform, and enduring debates over the meaning of development.

    What gives this issue its coherence is not thematic uniformity, but a shared attentiveness to marginalization and agency. Across different national and analytical settings, the articles show that exclusion is never merely a matter of abstract structure. It is lived in everyday forms of poverty, gender hierarchy, political neglect, cultural domination, and uneven access to voice. Yet the issue is equally attentive to the ways individuals and communities respond creatively and critically to such conditions, whether through activism, reinterpretation, resistance, or institutional reform.

    The opening article, on the Roma in post-communist Bulgaria, sets an important tone for the volume by examining the persistence of social marginalization despite the language of policy intervention and democratic transition. Its analysis of discrimination, poverty, and the limited implementation of anti-exclusion measures offers a sobering reminder that formal commitments to equality are rarely sufficient on their own. The article invites us to reflect more broadly on the political limits of multicultural inclusion when public sympathy is weak, institutional will is inconsistent, and marginalized communities continue to bear the burden of longstanding social prejudice.

    Questions of exclusion and transformation take a different but equally significant form in the issue’s two contributions on Islam and Muslim women’s movements in Indonesia. The article on Rahima and Fahmina highlights how feminist engagement rooted in community experience and pesantren life can generate a grounded and socially responsive reinterpretation of Islamic knowledge. In a related vein, the article on liberal-progressive Muslim reformism shows how theological renewal, especially through the reopening of ijtihad and dialogue with modernity, has helped create intellectual and moral space for Muslim women to participate more fully in the production of religious knowledge and in struggles for gender justice. Considered together, these articles are among the distinctive strengths of this issue. They show that religious reform is not only a matter of doctrine, but also a lived and collective process through which women claim authority, challenge inherited inequalities, and construct more just ways of being Muslim in contemporary society.

    Historical memory and collective struggle emerge with particular force in the article on Sasak resistance in nineteenth-century Lombok. By focusing on the role of Tuan Guru Umar Kelayu, the article deepens our understanding of anti-colonial resistance as a movement shaped not only by economic grievance, but also by religious leadership, cultural identity, and social solidarity. Its contribution is important because it restores moral and historical texture to local resistance, showing how struggles against domination are often carried by figures whose authority is at once spiritual, communal, and political. In doing so, the article reminds us that local histories remain indispensable to any fuller account of power and emancipation in the region.

    The issue concludes with a broader conceptual reflection on development practice in the Global South. The article comparing top-down and bottom-up approaches offers a measured and timely intervention into a debate that has too often been framed in overly categorical terms. Rather than endorsing one model at the expense of the other, it argues for a more integrated view that recognizes both the participatory strengths of bottom-up initiatives and the continuing relevance of wider institutional and financial frameworks. This balanced perspective resonates with the issue as a whole, which repeatedly shows that durable social change rarely emerges from a single source. It is usually forged through negotiation among actors, scales, and forms of knowledge that must remain in conversation, even when they stand in tension.

    Taken together, the articles in this volume offer a rich and humane portrait of social inquiry at its best. They move across questions of minority exclusion, Islamic feminism, religious reform, anti-colonial memory, and development strategy, yet all are animated by a shared commitment to understanding how people confront structures of injustice while seeking more equitable futures. In this sense, the issue speaks not only to specific empirical debates, but also to larger concerns that remain central to social science today, namely how power is reproduced, how it is challenged, and how more inclusive forms of collective life may still be imagined.

    As editors, we are grateful for the care, range, and intellectual generosity represented in these pages. We hope this issue will be read not simply as a collection of individual studies, but as a meaningful contribution to ongoing conversations about justice, social change, and the diverse ways communities make claims upon history and the present. We extend our sincere thanks to the authors for their thoughtful scholarship, to the reviewers for their time and discernment, and to our readers for sustaining this journal as a shared space of reflection, dialogue, and critical inquiry.

    Best regards,

    Asep Iqbal

  • Journal of Asian Social Science Research
    Vol. 1 No. 1 (2019)

    Editors’ Preface
    JASSR, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2019

    It is with great pleasure that we present the inaugural issue of Journal of Asian Social Science Research (JASSR). As the first volume of the journal, this issue carries a special significance. It introduces not only a new scholarly platform, but also a shared intellectual commitment: to foster rigorous, reflective, and regionally grounded social science scholarship attentive to the complexities of Asian societies and their wider global entanglements.

    The articles brought together in this opening issue reflect a striking breadth of inquiry while also revealing a deeper coherence. Read together, they engage a set of enduring questions at the heart of social science, namely how religion is interpreted and lived, how power and identity are negotiated, how institutions mediate collective life, and how knowledge is transmitted across generations and settings. These questions are addressed here through a range of perspectives, from political thought and legal discourse to psychoanalytic media analysis, diaspora studies, and the sociology of education. What unites the contributions is a shared concern with the ways human beings inhabit social worlds marked by plurality, regulation, aspiration, and change.

    A central thread in this issue is the relationship between Islam and public life. The opening article, which compares conceptions of sharia and citizenship in Indonesia and Malaysia, offers a careful and timely intervention into debates too often framed in oppositional terms. By showing how constitutional frameworks, state practices, ethnic formations, and religious discourses intersect in complex and shifting ways, the article invites us to move beyond simplified distinctions between legal conservatism and modern liberal citizenship. In a related but distinct register, the comparative study of Abdurrahman Wahid and Ayatollah Khomeini deepens this inquiry by examining how two influential Muslim thinkers responded differently to the question of Islam-state relations. Together, these contributions remind us that Islamic political thought is never reducible to a single trajectory. It is shaped by history, context, intellectual genealogy, and the practical dilemmas of governing diverse societies.

    The issue also turns with admirable sensitivity to religion as lived experience. The study of wedding ceremonies among Indonesian Muslims in the Netherlands reveals how ritual practice is rearticulated in diasporic settings where legal frameworks, social conventions, and cultural expectations differ from those of the homeland. Its contribution is especially valuable because it highlights adaptation not as dilution, but as a meaningful process through which religious and cultural continuity is sustained under new circumstances. In a different institutional setting, the article on knowledge transmission in Pesantren Miftahul Huda draws attention to the fragile yet enduring infrastructures through which Islamic learning is preserved. By focusing on archiving practices, the study raises a quietly important question about memory, documentation, and the future of traditional educational institutions in a changing world. Read together, these two articles illuminate how religious life is maintained not only through belief, but also through practice, institution, and the careful negotiation of continuity.

    The inaugural issue also signals the journal’s openness to broader theoretical and cultural inquiry. The psychoanalytic reading of Babel offers a thoughtful reflection on the relationship between self and society, showing how modern subjectivity is shaped through the tension between desire and social regulation. Its presence in this issue broadens the journal’s horizon in a meaningful way. It reminds us that social science is enriched when it remains open to cultural texts as sites where fundamental social contradictions, moral pressures, and human vulnerabilities can be seen with unusual clarity.

    Taken as a whole, this issue offers more than a collection of individual articles. It presents a set of conversations about law and belonging, religion and state, ritual and migration, memory and institutions, selfhood and repression. In doing so, it models the kind of scholarship this journal seeks to encourage: empirically attentive, conceptually engaged, and responsive to the lived complexities of Asian societies. There is a particular value in beginning the journal with work that is at once locally grounded and intellectually expansive, because it affirms that careful studies of specific communities, texts, and institutions can also speak to larger theoretical and comparative concerns.

    As editors, we are deeply grateful to the authors who have entrusted this new journal with their work. We also extend our sincere thanks to the reviewers whose care and discernment have helped shape this issue, and to our readers who join us at the beginning of this endeavor. It is our hope that Journal of Asian Social Science Research will become a welcoming and serious space for scholarship, dialogue, and critical reflection, and that this inaugural issue will mark the beginning of many conversations still to come. 

    Best regards,

    Asep Iqbal