Race, Gender, and the Moral State: Cross-Cultural and Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue aims to critically examine the complex interplay among race, gender, and the moral state across diverse social, cultural, and political contexts globally. By “moral state,” we broadly refer to the ways states establish, justify, and maintain norms, ethical principles, and moral frameworks through institutional structures, policies, governance practices, and cultural discourses. This concept is inherently connected to notions of moral governance (Butler, 2004) and moral regimes (Mills, 1997), encompassing both normative assertions of state authority and the practical mechanisms of moral regulation employed by contemporary states.

The overarching focus of this Special Issue is twofold: First, it explores how the moral state actively shapes racial and gender identities, experiences, inequalities, and resistances. Second, it investigates how racial or gendered actors interact with the moral state, examining how their practices reshape state narratives, discourses, policies, and ideologies. Consequently, our scope explicitly invites cross-cultural and comparative analyses, aiming to illuminate the dynamic intersections of race and gender with state moral discourses and governance practices across varied modernities. Contributions incorporating interdisciplinary methodologies and perspectives, including sociology, anthropology, political science, history, cultural studies, gender studies, and critical race theory, are particularly encouraged.

This Special Issue is timely and significant, as recent scholarly debates have increasingly highlighted the limitations of single-axis analyses focusing solely on race or gender. Intersectionality, articulated by Crenshaw (1989), provides a critical framework to understand how multiple dimensions of identity and social stratification interact. Extending this dialogue, the Special Issue seeks to deepen our understanding of how these intersections are managed, contested, and reproduced through state-sanctioned moral logics and various social practices. It also explores how social actors engage with state power, reshaping the intersectional landscapes of race, gender, and morality. We welcome studies examining how moral states justify inequalities, manage differences, or articulate normative ideals of citizenship through intersecting dimensions of race and gender. We equally encourage analyses investigating how marginalized racial and gender groups interact, negotiate, and resist state power and moral regimes in global settings.

Drawing upon foundational works such as Butler’s theories of gender performativity and state violence (Butler, 1990, 2004), Mills’ racial contract (Mills, 1997), Collins’ concepts of controlling images and outsider-within (Collins, 2004, 2022), as well as recent empirical studies addressing race and gender inequalities (Hofstra et al., 2020; AlShebli et al., 2018), this Special Issue seeks to bridge theoretical and empirical research, situating these analyses within explicit considerations of morality and governance. In particular, it supplements existing scholarship by examining how moral imperatives and ethical frameworks at the state level concretely interact with race and gender globally. Previous studies, such as those addressing gender education policies in China (Naftali, 2024), gender roles during the COVID-19 pandemic (2023), and quantitative assessments of gender and racial biases in academia (West et al., 2013; Hofstra et al., 2020), have illustrated moral governance’s relevance but often remain case-specific. This Issue encourages broader analyses across diverse cultural and institutional contexts to provide more comprehensive insights.

The purpose of this Special Issue is fourfold:

1. To foster a deeper theoretical understanding of the moral state’s role in constructing and maintaining racial and gender norms.
2. To empirically investigate diverse manifestations and consequences of moral governance practices concerning race and gender across global contexts.
3. To encourage interdisciplinary and cross-cultural dialogues illuminating similarities, divergences, and complexities in how states morally regulate and respond to race and gender.
4. To explore how marginalized racial and gender groups, across diverse social contexts, interact with, negotiate, and resist state power and its associated moral regimes.

We request that, PRIOR TO submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the guest editor, Dr. Canglong Wang (c.wang@brighton.ac.uk), or to the Genealogy editorial office (genealogy@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editor to ensure proper fit within the special issue’s scope. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

References:

AlShebli, B. K., Rahwan, T., & Woon, W. L. (2018). The preeminence of ethnic diversity in scientific collaboration. Nature communications, 9(1), p.5163.

Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.

Butler, J. (2004). Undoing gender. New York: Routledge.

Collins, P. H. (2004). Black sexual politics: African Americans, gender, and the new racism. New York: Routledge.

Collins, P. H. (2022). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. New York: Routledge.

Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), Article 8.

Hofstra, B., Kulkarni, V. V., Munoz-Najar Galvez, S., He, B., Jurafsky, D., & McFarland, D. A. (2020). The diversity–innovation paradox in science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(17), 9284-9291.

Mills, C.W. (1997). The racial contract. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Naftali, O. (2024). Schooling ‘soft-spoken boys’ and ‘masculine girls’: morality, equality, and difference in China’s gender education. NAN NÜ, 26(1), 85-113.

West, J. D., Jacquet, J., King, M. M., Correll, S. J., & Bergstrom, C. T. (2013). The role of gender in scholarly authorship. PloS one, 8(7), e66212.

Dr. Canglong Wang
Guest Editor

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.

• race
• gender
• moral state
• intersectionality
• moral governance
• cross-cultural analysis
• global perspectives