Ronjon Paul Datta
Biographic Data
| ID | 226715 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ronjon Paul Datta |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ronjon Paul |
| FAMILY NAME | Datta |
| SIGNATURE | DATTA R P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Alberta |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6439-9749 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 18 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Of Halos and Horrors
Drawing on a radical Durkheimian framework, this article analyses neoliberal morals, myths and the politics of ageing, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic in Ontario, Canada, in which an inordinate number of elderly persons in long-term care died. Examining prevalent collective representations, we contend that older persons are differentially valued through two opposing yet structurally related sacral logics: the heroic and the abject . The…
Suicidal ideation and social integration in three Canadian provinces
Extending recent developments in the neo-Durkheimian analysis of suicidality as an indicator of social pathology, this paper analyses individual level survey data on suicidal ideation, perceptions of social support, and the sense of belonging from three Canadian provinces drawn from the Canadian Community Health Survey (2015-16). We ask whether or not social support and a sense of belonging affect suicide ideation differently. In answering this q…
Nominalist visualities and classical social theory
This paper elucidates a range of the potentials and limitations of nominalist sensibilities in social theory through an examination of their presence in Durkheim and Weber. Nominalism, which emerged in early modern western thought, holds that only individual particular cases exist and that there are no universals or generalities beyond mentally or linguistically constructed concepts; it also introduced new conceptions of will and voluntarism. Nom…
Getting real about nominalism again
Nominalism, while significantly affecting the history and development of modern western thought since the fourteenth century, has unfortunately been neglected in much recent social theory. In this article, we offer an introduction to this Special Forum on nominalism to help redress this circumstance. In addition to this introductory piece, the Forum consists of three articles respectively covering: questions of nominalism, relativism and universa…
"Concerning Durkheim's 1899 Lecture "On Penal Sanctions
This article provides a critical introduction to the first English translation of Durkheim’s Saturday, 2 December 1899, lecture that he entitled ‘Course Outline: On Penal Sanctions’. It was written for the first class of the final year of his course ‘General Physics of Law and Morality’. We provide some context to the lecture, a description of the four-year long course at Bordeaux of which it was a part, offer notes on our translation, and discus…
Tehran's troubled youth
Who's Got My Back
Critically reconsidering Durkheim's sociology of suicide, we develop a quantitative analysis of individual level data contained in the Canadian Community Health Survey (2009-2012) to investigate the relationship between perceptions of social support and suicidality in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Saskatchewan. We operationalize Durkheim's general sociology to investigate relationships between people's perceptions of the more obj…
Hearn, Jonathan, Theorizing Power
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
This article is the introduction to the Special Issue on Durkheim's Elementary Forms of Religious Life: Contemporary Engagements
Recent anglophone studies on Durkheim's sociology
Return of the Sacred
Alexander Tristan Riley. Godless Intellectuals? The Intellectual Pursuit of the Sacred Reinvented, New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2010, 298 pp
Situation Critical
This paper articulates the commitments, contours and justifications for a pluralist but non-eclectic critical, realist, reflexive social science with emancipatory aims. In it, we stress that social science can and should be used to guide the conceptualization of desirable and viable forms of social organization and their conditions of realization. In this regard, we advocate explanatory theorizing as an ethical duty of social scientists and as a …
Critical Theory and Social Justice
DOAJ is a unique and extensive index of diverse open access journals from around the world, driven by a growing community, committed to ensuring quality content is freely available online for everyone
Kelly Moore, Disrupting Science
Through a series of careful empirical case studies, Kelly Moore examines how for thirty years scientists puzzled through troubling political implications of scientific work during the height of the Cold War.She states that at "the heart of this book are the vibrant efforts of scientists to redefine the relationships between fact and value" (p.2).The topic, germane to much critical sociology, is compelling and she provides an account of the contex…
Politics and Existence
This article discusses theoretical parallels between Durkheim's concept of the totem and Foucault's concept of ' dispositif ' (social apparatus) and draws attention to the respective attempts by these theorists, in which these concepts play a substantial role, to move beyond Kantian conceptions of reality. It is argued that both concepts refer to historically specific structures constitutive of human existence, and to politics as an irreducible f…
From Foucault’s Genealogy to Aleatory Materialism
From political emergencies and states of exception to exceptional states and emergent politics
Agamben's Homo Sacer (1998) here serves as a stimulus for developing a neo-Durkheimian approach to the political. Durkheim's sociology of the sacred and government is read symptomatically to highlight the extent to which sacralisations refer to a real but underdetermined ontology of the social that threatens to break loose into violence against the mechanisms of rule that regulate institutions, actions and the broader normative terrain in which c…
Past Conferences
Politics and Existence
This article discusses theoretical parallels between Durkheim's concept of the totem and Foucault's concept of ' dispositif ' (social apparatus) and draws attention to the respective attempts by these theorists, in which these concepts play a substantial role, to move beyond Kantian conceptions of reality. It is argued that both concepts refer to historically specific structures constitutive of human existence, and to politics as an irreducible f…
"Concerning Durkheim's 1899 Lecture "On Penal Sanctions
This article provides a critical introduction to the first English translation of Durkheim’s Saturday, 2 December 1899, lecture that he entitled ‘Course Outline: On Penal Sanctions’. It was written for the first class of the final year of his course ‘General Physics of Law and Morality’. We provide some context to the lecture, a description of the four-year long course at Bordeaux of which it was a part, offer notes on our translation, and discus…
Who's Got My Back
Critically reconsidering Durkheim's sociology of suicide, we develop a quantitative analysis of individual level data contained in the Canadian Community Health Survey (2009-2012) to investigate the relationship between perceptions of social support and suicidality in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Saskatchewan. We operationalize Durkheim's general sociology to investigate relationships between people's perceptions of the more obj…
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
This article is the introduction to the Special Issue on Durkheim's Elementary Forms of Religious Life: Contemporary Engagements
From political emergencies and states of exception to exceptional states and emergent politics
Agamben's Homo Sacer (1998) here serves as a stimulus for developing a neo-Durkheimian approach to the political. Durkheim's sociology of the sacred and government is read symptomatically to highlight the extent to which sacralisations refer to a real but underdetermined ontology of the social that threatens to break loose into violence against the mechanisms of rule that regulate institutions, actions and the broader normative terrain in which c…
Nominalist visualities and classical social theory
This paper elucidates a range of the potentials and limitations of nominalist sensibilities in social theory through an examination of their presence in Durkheim and Weber. Nominalism, which emerged in early modern western thought, holds that only individual particular cases exist and that there are no universals or generalities beyond mentally or linguistically constructed concepts; it also introduced new conceptions of will and voluntarism. Nom…
Tehran's troubled youth
Past Conferences
From political emergencies and states of exception to exceptional states and emergent politics
Agamben's Homo Sacer (1998) here serves as a stimulus for developing a neo-Durkheimian approach to the political. Durkheim's sociology of the sacred and government is read symptomatically to highlight the extent to which sacralisations refer to a real but underdetermined ontology of the social that threatens to break loose into violence against the mechanisms of rule that regulate institutions, actions and the broader normative terrain in which c…
From Foucault’s Genealogy to Aleatory Materialism
Politics and Existence
This article discusses theoretical parallels between Durkheim's concept of the totem and Foucault's concept of ' dispositif ' (social apparatus) and draws attention to the respective attempts by these theorists, in which these concepts play a substantial role, to move beyond Kantian conceptions of reality. It is argued that both concepts refer to historically specific structures constitutive of human existence, and to politics as an irreducible f…
Critical Theory and Social Justice
DOAJ is a unique and extensive index of diverse open access journals from around the world, driven by a growing community, committed to ensuring quality content is freely available online for everyone
Kelly Moore, Disrupting Science
Through a series of careful empirical case studies, Kelly Moore examines how for thirty years scientists puzzled through troubling political implications of scientific work during the height of the Cold War.She states that at "the heart of this book are the vibrant efforts of scientists to redefine the relationships between fact and value" (p.2).The topic, germane to much critical sociology, is compelling and she provides an account of the contex…
Situation Critical
This paper articulates the commitments, contours and justifications for a pluralist but non-eclectic critical, realist, reflexive social science with emancipatory aims. In it, we stress that social science can and should be used to guide the conceptualization of desirable and viable forms of social organization and their conditions of realization. In this regard, we advocate explanatory theorizing as an ethical duty of social scientists and as a …
Return of the Sacred
Alexander Tristan Riley. Godless Intellectuals? The Intellectual Pursuit of the Sacred Reinvented, New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2010, 298 pp
Recent anglophone studies on Durkheim's sociology
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
This article is the introduction to the Special Issue on Durkheim's Elementary Forms of Religious Life: Contemporary Engagements
Hearn, Jonathan, Theorizing Power
Who's Got My Back
Critically reconsidering Durkheim's sociology of suicide, we develop a quantitative analysis of individual level data contained in the Canadian Community Health Survey (2009-2012) to investigate the relationship between perceptions of social support and suicidality in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Saskatchewan. We operationalize Durkheim's general sociology to investigate relationships between people's perceptions of the more obj…
Tehran's troubled youth
"Concerning Durkheim's 1899 Lecture "On Penal Sanctions
This article provides a critical introduction to the first English translation of Durkheim’s Saturday, 2 December 1899, lecture that he entitled ‘Course Outline: On Penal Sanctions’. It was written for the first class of the final year of his course ‘General Physics of Law and Morality’. We provide some context to the lecture, a description of the four-year long course at Bordeaux of which it was a part, offer notes on our translation, and discus…
Nominalist visualities and classical social theory
This paper elucidates a range of the potentials and limitations of nominalist sensibilities in social theory through an examination of their presence in Durkheim and Weber. Nominalism, which emerged in early modern western thought, holds that only individual particular cases exist and that there are no universals or generalities beyond mentally or linguistically constructed concepts; it also introduced new conceptions of will and voluntarism. Nom…
Getting real about nominalism again
Nominalism, while significantly affecting the history and development of modern western thought since the fourteenth century, has unfortunately been neglected in much recent social theory. In this article, we offer an introduction to this Special Forum on nominalism to help redress this circumstance. In addition to this introductory piece, the Forum consists of three articles respectively covering: questions of nominalism, relativism and universa…
Suicidal ideation and social integration in three Canadian provinces
Extending recent developments in the neo-Durkheimian analysis of suicidality as an indicator of social pathology, this paper analyses individual level survey data on suicidal ideation, perceptions of social support, and the sense of belonging from three Canadian provinces drawn from the Canadian Community Health Survey (2015-16). We ask whether or not social support and a sense of belonging affect suicide ideation differently. In answering this q…
Of Halos and Horrors
Drawing on a radical Durkheimian framework, this article analyses neoliberal morals, myths and the politics of ageing, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic in Ontario, Canada, in which an inordinate number of elderly persons in long-term care died. Examining prevalent collective representations, we contend that older persons are differentially valued through two opposing yet structurally related sacral logics: the heroic and the abject . The…
Sociology (13 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Emile Durkheim and Sociology (9 works) · Political science (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Law (4 works) · Psychology (4 works)