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Humanities
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Labor Utopias and Dystopias
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Labor Utopias and Dystopias

A special issue of Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 January 2026 | Viewed by 6141

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Ping Zhu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Literature, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA
Interests: Chinese modern literature; literary theory; women and gender studies; Chinese cinema

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Labor fundamentally shapes human existence, from our daily rhythms and social relationships to our deepest hopes and fears about the future. As global capitalism continues to redefine the boundaries between production and reproduction, the local and the global, nature and technology, and what is human and non-human, labor finds itself at the crossroads of dystopian threats—such as alienation, datafication, precarity, and environmental devastation—and utopian promises, including creative fulfillment, collective bonding, and human emancipation. This Special Issue examines how labor practices, discourses, and imaginaries oscillate between these poles, creating spaces for both oppression and liberation.

This Special Issue seeks to explore how labor practices, discourses, and imaginaries both reflect and resist the totalizing logic of market rationality. At the same time, it aims to highlight how labor gestures toward alternative forms of collective organization, community, and existence.

We welcome theoretically informed and interdisciplinary submissions that engage with labor at the intersection of other key axes of social power. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Platform capitalism and digital labor;
  • Artificial intelligence, automation, and posthuman labor;
  • Climate crisis and labor transformation;
  • Gender, affective labor, and social reproduction;
  • Labor, migration, and community;
  • Alternative modes of labor from the Socialist past and the Global South;
  • Labor, bodies, and health;
  • Labor, religion, and spirituality.

Prof. Dr. Ping Zhu
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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.

Keywords

  • utopia and dystopia
  • global capitalism
  • posthuman labor
  • environment
  • gender

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

21 pages, 387 KB  
Article
Escaping the Workshop: Writers from the Factory in China’s Early Reform Era (1978–1989)
by Sandy J. S. Zhang
Humanities 2025, 14(10), 189; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14100189 - 26 Sep 2025
Viewed by 1396
Abstract
This article traces the trajectory of China’s dominant literary field as it shifted from proletarian to intellectual literature in the early reform era. It examines the conditions and cultural logic underlying the striking phenomenon whereby former industrial workers, once incorporated into the literary [...] Read more.
This article traces the trajectory of China’s dominant literary field as it shifted from proletarian to intellectual literature in the early reform era. It examines the conditions and cultural logic underlying the striking phenomenon whereby former industrial workers, once incorporated into the literary field, rapidly distanced themselves from the very genre historically rooted in their own industrial experiences, namely, worker literature. Focusing on writers emerging from factories and on Shanghai Literature—a journal once known for publishing worker literature. The article analyzes the reconfiguration of class and identity that accompanied China’s transition from its high socialist past. I argue that socialist worker literature never fully reconciled the structural antagonism between manual and mental labor. In the early reform era, factory-based writers appropriated literature as a mode of symbolic escape and ideological critique. Hence, literature itself became a site where the contradictions of socialist and capitalist modernity were negotiated and contested. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Labor Utopias and Dystopias)
15 pages, 10097 KB  
Article
The Disaster Empire in The Wandering Earth 2
by Ping Zhu
Humanities 2025, 14(3), 63; https://doi.org/10.3390/h14030063 - 13 Mar 2025
Viewed by 3078
Abstract
This paper analyzes how the 2023 Chinese science fiction blockbuster The Wandering Earth 2 constructs what I call a “disaster empire”—a biopolitical system that seamlessly integrates authoritarian governance with capitalist logic through the constant threat of catastrophe. Through close readings of the film’s [...] Read more.
This paper analyzes how the 2023 Chinese science fiction blockbuster The Wandering Earth 2 constructs what I call a “disaster empire”—a biopolitical system that seamlessly integrates authoritarian governance with capitalist logic through the constant threat of catastrophe. Through close readings of the film’s reappropriation of the Chinese Moving Mountain fable, its treatment of human sacrifice, and its portrayal of digital afterlife, I argue that the film presents a troubling vision where crisis enables the formation of a homogeneous time-space where the patriarchal family, the nation-state, and bio-capital converge to form a massive, enduring system of domination. While the film has been celebrated for its socialist values of collective survival, I demonstrate how it actually embodies the convergence of authoritarianism and global capitalism in its most insidious form. Drawing on theories of biopower, affect, and dead labor from Marxist scholars, this paper reveals how The Wandering Earth 2 functions as a work of prescriptive realism that faithfully encapsulates the deep drive of authoritarian capitalism. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Labor Utopias and Dystopias)
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