Scope

Scope

Scope:

The Axis Mundi journal was established in 2004 as a periodical of the Department of Comparative Religious Studies, at Comenius University in Bratislava. The journal is devoted exclusively to the scientific and empirical study of religion and does not adhere to specific religious, theological, political, or ideological tendencies; hence, it can be considered the only journal that is truly representative of the field of religious studies in Slovakia. Although Axis Mundi is also concerned with regional and global issues in religious studies, it is primarily a platform that has formed out of the legacy of the Bratislava School of Religious Studies, which is especially well-known for its attempts to discover the meanings of religious and cultural phenomena. It employs linguistic, semiotic, hermeneutic, interpretative, and/or phenomenological approaches using both synchronic and diachronic perspectives. However, the focus of Axis Mundi by no means restricted to this. On the contrary, it provides an arena within which the traditional paradigms and global trends in religious studies can meet, to mutual benefit. Hence the journal always reflects the current global scientific discourse, which is simultaneously enriched with perspectives within the scope of regional schools of religious studies. The journal is therefore an outlet for the emergence of new impetuses for open, inclusive academic discussion on both the regional and global levels.

Axis Mundi does not simply subscribe to the thesis that "there is no society without religion", but always considers the corollary as well: "there is equally no religion without society". This dynamic is approached through time and space, the global and local. The journal does not examine religion thus conceived solely from one point of view or via one methodological approach. Consequently, the religious studies presented in the journal has methodological fluidity and intersects with other scientific disciplines, such as ethnology, linguistics, cultural and social anthropology, history, archaeology, and political science. The journal also has the ambition to become a forum for an engaged religious studies that provides commentaries on the complicated position of diverse religious groups vis-à-vis the state, power–religion relationships, religious rights and the law, and the rights of religious minorities and the conditions for religious plurality in Central Europe.

Subject areas:

Visual Studies, Maya Studies, Postcolonial Studies, New Religious Movement, Vernacular Religion, Anthropology of Religion, Cultural Anthropology, Applied Ethnography,  Folk Religion, Folk Belief, Religious Architecture, Epigraphy and Iconography, Religion and State Power, Archaeology and Religion, Semiotic Studies, Hermeneutic Studies, Mythology, Literary Analysis.