About the Journal
Banwa is a multidisciplinary, open-access, peer-reviewed journal published biannually by the University of the Philippines Mindanao, under the auspices of the Office of Research, since 2004. Starting in 2013, the journal will be split into two annual journals, with Series A focusing on the arts and humanities and the social and behavioral sciences and Series B on the natural and applied sciences. As a regional journal, Series A has preference for, but is not limited to, scholarly and creative works about or relevant to Mindanao.
In the vernacular, the term banwa / banua is commonly understood in its modern social and geopolitical sense as “community” and “territory.” But this term, within the context of the Austronesian or Malayo-Polynesian family of languages, encompasses a whole range of meanings. The banwa, therefore, can be understood as the totality of the world; a space, both physical and conceptual, that encapsulates the whole gamut of human-nonhuman interlockings, with emphasis not only on human individuals and groups—and by extension, human constructs—but also on the various aspects of nature that they engage in, in complex and contingent ways.
