Sca

SOCIETY AND CULTURE IN ASIA (SCA) is an international, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, fully open-access academic journal. The journal is dedicated to publishing high-quality original research on social structures, cultural forms, and historical transformations across Asia, spanning the vast geographical range from East Asia to Southeast Asia, and from South Asia to Central Asia.

The core conviction of SCA is “Asia as method, not merely Asia as object” . We regard Asia not simply as a geographical entity awaiting description and explanation, but as a field of knowledge capable of generating its own concepts, theories, and critical perspectives. At the same time, the journal is firmly committed to the principle of open access, removing all economic barriers to knowledge so that any reader, anywhere, with any level of institutional resources, may access all published content freely, permanently, and unconditionally.

Open Access Statement

SCA operates as a Diamond (Platinum) Open Access journal. This means:

  • Free for all readers: All articles are immediately, permanently, and unconditionally available online. No subscription, no registration, no paywalls.

  • Free for all authors: SCA charges no Article Processing Charges (APCs), submission fees, or page charges. We believe that the opportunity to publish should never depend on an author’s personal or institutional funding—a commitment of particular importance for scholars from across Asia and the Global South.

  • Open licensing: All articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0) . Authors retain copyright of their work and grant anyone the right to share, adapt, and reuse the material, provided appropriate credit is given. This maximises scholarly dialogue and knowledge dissemination.

  • Open science practices: Where ethically and legally permissible, SCA encourages authors to share data, field materials, and pre-registrations to promote transparency, reproducibility, and cumulative scholarly progress.

Aims, Scope, and Core Areas

SCA is rooted in the intersections of Asian studies, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, history, and political science, and seeks to move beyond the singular paradigm of “area studies.” The journal’s fundamental position is that the richness of Asia lies not only in its diverse social forms and cultural traditions but also—and especially—in the new experiences, concepts, and critical resources these societies and cultures continue to generate within the processes of global modernity.

We encourage authors to build creative dialogues between rigorous empirical research and profound theoretical reflection, and especially welcome high-quality submissions in the following areas:

Social Structures and Change

  • Social stratification, class restructuring, and inequality in Asia

  • Urban–rural relations, migration, and urbanisation

  • Contemporary transformations of family, kinship, and intergenerational relations

  • Education, occupations, and social mobility

  • Civil society, social movements, and collective action

  • Transformations of labour, work, and livelihood

Cultural Production and Meaning Practices

  • Asian pathways of religion, ritual, and secularisation

  • Ethnicity, nationalism, and identity politics

  • Language, media, and cultural representation

  • Popular culture, consumer culture, and everyday life

  • Cultural heritage, the reinvention of tradition, and collective memory

  • Art, literature, and the social imagination

Politics and Social Governance

  • State formations, authoritarianism, and democratisation

  • Governmentality, policy, and everyday politics

  • Law, rights, and social justice

  • Borders, sovereignty, and geopolitics

  • Social protest and civil disobedience

  • Regional cooperation, integration, and conflict

Gender, Body, and Intimate Relations

  • Gender politics and feminist movements in Asian contexts

  • Body, affect, and the governance of life

  • Sexuality, intimacy, and marriage systems

  • Intersectional perspectives on gender, class, and ethnicity

Development, Environment, and Technology

  • Developmentalism and its critiques

  • Environmental justice, ecological crisis, and sustainability

  • Technopolitics, digital society, and the platform economy

  • Infrastructure, the production of space, and regional connectivity

Intellectual History and Knowledge Production

  • Asian philosophical traditions and modern social thought

  • Postcolonial theory and Asian intellectual subjectivity

  • The geopolitics of knowledge production: who produces theory, and for whom?

  • Cross-cultural dialogue and the politics of translation

Interdisciplinary Dialogue
SCA consistently welcomes boundary-crossing scholarship from sociology, anthropology, history, political science, cultural studies, geography, communication studies, literary studies, religious studies, gender studies, urban studies, and related fields, provided it carries a clear Asian focus and sociological or cultural significance.

Hengbai Academic Bookseller & Publishing LLC

Always Open for Submissions
We accept submissions year-round with no deadline restrictions. Work at your own pace and submit when your research is ready—no cutoff date applies.

Peer‑Review
All manuscripts undergo a robust peer‑review process to ensure they meet rigorous standards of scientific validity, methodological soundness, and significance to the research community.

Online First
Accepted articles are published online immediately upon acceptance, without waiting for issue compilation. This ensures your findings reach the scientific community as rapidly as possible.

Publishing Models

Open Access
Your work will be permanently available online, free to download, share, and read, maximizing academic impact and global visibility.

Non‑Open Access (Subscription)
We offer a traditional subscription‑based pathway that protects copyright and accommodates commercial reuse, suitable for authors with specific publication policy requirements.

Our Mission: Preserving and Disseminating Scholarly Knowledge

We provide a comprehensive digital platform dedicated to the preservation and open dissemination of academic research. Our services include:

  • Repository for Diverse Scholarly Materials – We accept and host a wide range of academic content, including research papers, manuscripts, printed publications, and electronic versions of journals. This includes materials from discontinued journals, lost or rare print editions, sole surviving copies, and publications from defunct presses—ensuring that valuable scholarly heritage is not lost to time.

  • Preprint Repository Across All Disciplines – Researchers are welcome to submit and publish preprints covering all fields of study, including natural sciences, humanities, social sciences, and interdisciplinary research. Submissions are accepted in multiple languages: English, Chinese, Russian, Korean, Japanese, and other languages.

  • Free and Open Access – Submission, publication, and viewing of preprints are completely free of charge. All content is made publicly available online at no cost to readers.

  • Reusable Under Author‑Defined Terms – To maximize the reach and impact of scholarly work, users may reuse, reproduce, or redistribute content for public purposes, subject to the terms specified by the author. This flexible framework encourages broader dissemination and collaboration across the global research community.

Our Community

We partner with like-minded individuals and organizations to develop open infrastructure that enables the publication of open-access works, the sharing of our academic journals through open platforms and services, and the global promotion of our vision and core values. Below is a selection of our partner organizations.