Focus and Scope

Focus

Wawasan publishes original, theoretically informed, and empirically grounded research examining the changing relationships between religion, public life, and contemporary social transformation.

The journal is particularly concerned with the ways religious ideas, practices, communities, institutions, authorities, identities, and material cultures respond to, shape, negotiate, and sometimes contest processes of social change.

Rather than treating religion merely as a theological doctrine or a static cultural object, Wawasan approaches religion as a lived, mediated, institutional, political, ethical, cultural, and social phenomenon embedded in wider processes of transformation.

The journal prioritizes manuscripts that combine strong empirical or textual evidence, clear theoretical engagement, methodological rigor, and relevance to wider international scholarship. Studies grounded in particular communities, traditions, or geographical settings should demonstrate how their findings contribute to broader conceptual, comparative, or interdisciplinary debates.

Wawasan has a particular scholarly interest in Southeast Asia and the wider Global South, without limiting publication to these regions. Comparative and transregional studies, as well as research connecting Global South experiences with wider global debates, are especially encouraged.

Scope

Wawasan welcomes original research in the following interconnected areas:

1. Religion, Public Life, Governance, and Authority

This area examines interactions between religion and public institutions, political processes, governance, citizenship, and changing configurations of religious authority.

Relevant topics include:

religion and public policy;
religion, state, and governance;
religious authority and institutional change;
religion, citizenship, and public participation;
religious freedom and human rights;
religion and political contestation;
religion, extremism, radicalisation, and peacebuilding;
religious organisations and civil society;
religion and public administration;
secularism, post-secularism, and public religion;
religion, law, and social regulation;
changing configurations of religious leadership and authority.

2. Lived Religion, Ritual, Heritage, and Cultural Transformation

This area investigates religion as it is experienced, interpreted, and practised in everyday life, including the transformation of rituals, traditions, sacred spaces, and religious-cultural heritage.

Relevant topics include:

lived and everyday religion;
ritual and religious practice;
material religion;
sacred spaces and landscapes;
pilgrimage and religious mobility;
indigenous and vernacular religions;
religion and cultural identity;
religion, memory, and heritage;
religious festivals and public culture;
commodification of religion and sacred traditions;
religious adaptation and cultural resilience;
religion, arts, music, performance, and visual culture.

Wawasan particularly encourages studies that move beyond descriptive accounts of local traditions and demonstrate their significance for wider debates in religious studies, anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, or related disciplines.

3. Religion, Gender, Body, Family, and Social Difference

This area explores how religion intersects with gender relations, embodiment, family life, social identities, and experiences of difference, inequality, or marginality.

Relevant topics include:

religion and gender;
women and religious agency;
masculinity and religion;
religion and embodiment;
sexuality and religious ethics;
religion, marriage, and family;
widowhood and kinship;
religious dress and identity;
religion, ethnicity, and minority identities;
migration, diaspora, and belonging;
religion and social stigma;
religion, inequality, and marginalisation.

4. Religion, Ecology, and Environmental Transformation

This area focuses on religious responses to ecological crises and the relationships between religious worldviews, environmental ethics, communities, and more-than-human environments.

Relevant topics include:

religion and climate change;
eco-theology;
Islamic environmental ethics;
religious environmentalism;
religion and ecological justice;
indigenous ecological knowledge;
religion, land, and sacred landscapes;
religion and disaster;
gender, religion, and environmental activism;
religious communities and environmental resilience;
spirituality and more-than-human relations.

5. Digital Religion, Media, and Technological Transformation

This area addresses the transformation of religious practices, institutions, identities, communities, and authority through digital media and emerging technologies.

Relevant topics include:

digital religion;
religion and social media;
online religious communities;
digital religious authority;
platformisation of religion;
religious influencers and digital preaching;
religion and artificial intelligence;
algorithmic mediation of religious knowledge;
digital ritual and worship;
religion in the post-truth environment;
digital religious activism;
online extremism and counter-radicalisation;
media representations of religion.

6. Religious Diversity, Interreligious Relations, and Plural Societies

This area investigates encounters among religious traditions and the ways religious diversity is experienced, negotiated, governed, or contested within plural societies.

Relevant topics include:

interreligious dialogue;
interfaith relations;
religious pluralism;
religious tolerance and coexistence;
religious conflict and reconciliation;
minority-majority relations;
religious boundary-making;
interreligious ritual and cultural exchange;
religion and multiculturalism;
comparative religious encounters;
grassroots peacebuilding;
religious diversity and public institutions.

7. Religion, Modernity, Mobility, and Social Change

This area examines religion in relation to broader transformations associated with modernity, globalisation, urbanisation, migration, economic change, and transnational connections.

Relevant topics include: