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

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