Secularism, Multiculturalism and Race–Religion Entanglements

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Genealogy welcomes articles that critically engage with the concepts of race, religion, secularism, and multiculturalism. It starts from the observation that Euro-American history has been characterized by white and Western Christian hegemony, in which religious and racial exclusion are entangled. Different forms of secularism and multiculturalism have (separately or combined) been proposed to challenge these forms of hegemony, and the injustices that result from them (Taylor 1994, 1998; Laborde 2017; Modood 2019). However, other scholars have argued that secularism and multiculturalism, particularly in their partnership with liberalism, reinforce and obscure structural inequalities (Asad 2003; Lentin and Titley 2011; Kahn and Lloyd 2016). Both secularism and multiculturalism have—despite their differences—received remarkably similar critiques of fostering essentialism, reifying majority–minority dynamics, and being vessels for state governmentality (Bhandar 2009; Amir-Moazami 2022). Critics of multiculturalist or secularist (normative) policies and theories, and those advocating for them, rarely enter into conversation. This special issue provides an interdisciplinary forum to bring these perspectives together. It invites analyses of the historical and contemporary entanglements of racial and religious exclusion, and of promising ways to address these patterns—whether by deploying, rethinking, resisting, or going beyond liberalism, secularism, or multiculturalism.

In line with this aim, we invite both theoretical and theoretically informed empirical papers from all disciplines and all geographical contexts.

Possible topics could include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Genealogical studies of the race–religion constellation in relation to regimes of secularism and/or multiculturalism.
• The role of ‘religio-secularism’ in shaping racism.
• Islamophobia, antisemitism, or antizyganism.
• Political theological analyses of liberalism, secularism and/or multiculturalism.
• Nationalism in relation to religion and race.
• The nexus of modernity–coloniality–secularity.
• Anti-racism activism in relation to secularism and/or multiculturalism.
• Liberalism’s engagement with religion and race.
• The politics of recognition.
• Neutrality and/or equality as normative standards for racial or religious (in)justice.
• The (dis)connections between state-led institutional programs, societal discourse, and political theories.
• Tensions between ideal and non-ideal theory in secularist and multiculturalist theory.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400–600 words summarizing their intended contribution by May 1st 2025. Please send it to sophie.lauwers@kuleuven.be with the subject line “Submission Special Issue Genealogy”. Abstracts will be reviewed to ensure a fit within the scope of the Special Issue. We will then invite selected papers to be submitted as full manuscripts for peer review by December 1st 2025. Each article will be published in open access, on a rolling basis; fee waivers are available if an author’s funding does not cover the APC.

References

Amir-Moazami, Schirin. 2022. Interrogating Muslims: The Liberal-Secular Matrix of Integration. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Asad, Talal. 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Bhandar, Brenna. 2009. ‘The Ties That Bind: Multiculturalism and Secularism Reconsidered’. Journal of Law and Society 36 (3): 301–26. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6478.2009.00469.x.

Kahn, Jonathon Samuel, and Vincent W. Lloyd, eds. 2016. Race and Secularism in America. Religion, Culture, and Public Life. New York: Columbia University Press.

Laborde, Cécile. 2017. Liberalism’s Religion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Lentin, Alana, and Gavan Titley. 2011. The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a Neoliberal Age. London New York: Zed Books.

Modood, Tariq. 2019. Essays on Secularism and Multiculturalism. Colchester: ECPR Press.

Taylor, Charles. 1994. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Edited by Amy Gutmann. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

———. 1998. ‘Modes of Secularism’. In Secularism and Its Critics, edited by Rajeev Bhargava, 31–53. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dr. A. Sophie Lauwers
Dr. Anya Topolski
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Genealogy is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• multiculturalism
• secularism
• liberalism
• racism
• religious inequality
• Christian hegemony
• race–religion constellation
• governance
• politics of difference