Ronjon Paul Datta, PhD, MA, BAH, BTh
Associate Professor
Office: 156-3 CHS
Email: rpdatta@uwindsor.ca
Telephone: 519.253.3000 ext. 3975
Research and Teaching Areas
Dr. Ronjon Paul Datta is an award-winning Associate Professor and Member of the Graduate Faculty in the Department of Sociology & Criminology, Member of Canterbury College, Executive Committee Member in the Canadian Sociological Association, member of the Racial Justice Committee of the Windsor University Faculty Association, a former Senator for the Faculty of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences UWindsor, and HRG Research Fellow. As a social theorist who doctored in sociology with the world renown expert in law and social theory, Dr. Alan Hunt, and completed an MA thesis on Durkheim under the supervision of leading radical Durkheimian sociologist, Dr. Frank Pearce, Dr. Datta’s work focuses on power, metatheory, and the sacred in society, developing new critical theoretical resources for analyzing and explaining a variety of social dynamics shaping capitalist societies. Presently, he is writing a book on Durkheim and religion for Routledge, and continues research on metatheory, including its implications for analyzing power. He received a Governor General of Canada Academic Gold Medal for his doctoral work on Michel Foucault, social theory, political sociology, and the philosophy of social science. An internationally recognized expert in Durkheimian studies, Foucauldian and Althusserian thought, and the philosophy of social science, his work has appeared in major academic venues in Canada, Britain, France, the USA, and Turkey, such as: International Social Science Journal (Paris: UNESCO), The Canadian Review of Sociology, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, Journal of Classical Sociology, L’Année Sociologique, The Canadian Journal of Sociology, Critical Sociology, and Durkheimian Studies. He has published on a wide variety of topics including contemporary Marxist theory, nominalism and realism in classical and contemporary social theory, and the 2014 editorship, with Dr. Tara Milbrandt, of the largest issue of The Canadian Journal of Sociology ever produced, dedicated to Durkheim’s work on religion, and featuring established and emerging national and international scholars. Other publications discuss: suicidality and social pathology; poststructuralist political economy and morality; the metaphysics of morals in security discourse; Durkheim, morality and law; zombie capitalism, the political economy of debt; religion, power and the sacred; the philosophy of social science; justice, post-politics; cosmopolitanism; aleatory materialism; Critical Realism; and Critical Theory. Prior to arriving in Windsor in 2013, he was Assistant Professor of Social Theory and Culture and Director of the Intermedia Research Studio in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta. He has also worked as an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Mount Allison University. Dr. Datta is known to be a committed educator meriting the Bill Meloff Memorial Teaching Award from the University of Alberta. The courses he has taught in his career cover a wide range including: classical and contemporary social theory, religion, law, political criminology, religion, economic sociology, political sociology, postmodernism, social inequality, technology and society, qualitative methodology, and dedicated on-going advanced seminars on Michel Foucault, and another on sacrifice. In recognition of his service to UWindsor, in December 2015 he received an “Innovation Award for Recruitment” from the Faculty of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (FAHSS), and for his expertise in Durkheimian studies, the Humanities Research Group Research Fellowship, UWindsor, 2018-19. In his spare time, he enjoys playing tennis, cooking, following Formula 1, fitness, playing piano and electronic music, and exploring the City of Windsor and Essex County.
Recent Courses Taught
Education
Recent and Key Publications
- Datta, Ronjon Paul. 2022. Ideology and Social Reproduction in Capitalist Societies: Louis Althusser’s Theoretical Intervention. Reading Sociology: Decolonizing Canada, Fourth Edition. Eds. Johanne Jean-Pierre, Vanessa Watts, Carl E. James, Patrizia Albanese, Xiaobei Chen, Michael Graydon. Toronto: Oxford University Press and the Canadian Sociological Association.
- Datta, Ronjon Paul and Nakhaie, Reza. 2022. Suicidal Ideation and Social Integration in Three Canadian Provinces: The Importance of Social Support and Community Belonging. The Canadian Review of Sociology. Volume 59 (3): 74-97. https://doi.org/10.1111/cars.12396
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Datta, Ronjon Paul. & Hanemaayer, Ariane. 2021. Nominalist visualities and classical social theory: An Examination of Durkheim and Weber. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. DOI: 10.1111/jtsb.12281
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Datta, Ronjon Paul & Hanemaayer, Ariane. 2021. Getting Real About Nominalism Again. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. DOI: 10.1111/jtsb.12279
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Datta, Ronjon Paul and Hanemaayer, Ariane. 2021. Guest Editors. Special Forum on Nominalism and Social Theory. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour.
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Datta, Ronjon Paul (Lead Inaugural Editor). 2021. The RAACES Review. Anti-Black Racism and Emergent Solidarity at UWindsor: A Dossier. https://ojs.scholarsportal.info/windsor/index.php/raaces/index
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Datta, Ronjon Paul. 2017. Zombie Capitalism and the Collective Conscience: Between Bataille and Agamben. Interdisciplinary Approaches to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse 1: 59-73.
- Datta, Ronjon Paul. In Progress. Durkheim on Religion. Key Thinkers in Religious Studies. Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge
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Datta, Ronjon Paul and Pizarro Noel François, 2020. Concerning Durkheim’s 1899 Lecture ‘On Penal Sanctions’. Durkheimian Studies, 24, pp. 76-85.
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Datta, Ronjon Paul. 2019. You Only Get What You Give? A New Radical Durkheimian Political Economy of Sacrifice. Istanbul University Journal of Sociology 39(1), pp. 85-105.
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Nakhaie, R., Dadgar, A. & Datta, R. P. 2020. Tehran's Troubled Youth: A neo-Durkheimian analysis of suicidality and family dynamics. International Social Science Journal.
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Datta, Ronjon Paul. 2018. Theorizing fiscal sacrifices in zombie capitalism: A radical Durkheimian Approach. In Revisiting Crimes of the Powerful: Revisiting Crimes of the Powerful: Marxism, crime and deviance. Eds. M Beare, S. Tombs, S. Bittle, L. Snider, D. Whyte. New York: Routledge, pp. 87-110.
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Nakhaie, Reza and Datta, Ronjon Paul. 2018. Who’s Got My Back? A Neo-Durkheimian Analysis of Suicidality and Perceptions of Social Support in British Columbia and Saskatchewan. The Canadian Journal of Sociology, pp. 13-169.
- Datta, Ronjon Paul, and Milbrandt, Tara Hope. 2014. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life: Discursive Monument, Symbolic Feast. Introduction to Special Issue. The Canadian Journal of Sociology 39(4):473-522.
- Datta, Ronjon Paul, and Milbrandt, Tara Hope. 2014 (eds.). Special Issue. Durkheim’s Elementary Forms of Religious Life: Contemporary Engagements. The Canadian Journal of Sociology, 39(4):473-777.
- Datta, Ronjon Paul. 2013. Mundane Cosmopolitanism, Mobility and Social Justice: A Durkheimian Approach. Mobilities, Knowledge and Social Justice. Ed. Suzan Ilcan. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
- Datta, Ronjon Paul. 2012. Foucault’s Struggle for Justice: Bourgeois versus Popular Conceptions. Thinking About Justice: A Book of Readings, eds. Kelly Gorkoff and Richard Jochelson, Halifax and Winnipeg: Fernwood Books, pp. 101-121.
- Datta, Ronjon Paul. 2011. Security and the Void: Aleatory Materialism contra Governmentality. Anti-Security, eds. George Rigakos and Mark Neocleous, Ottawa: Red Quill Books, pp. 217-241.
- Datta, Ronjon Paul. 2011. Time for Zombies: Sacrifice and the Structural Phenomenology of Capitalist Futures. Race, Oppression and the Zombie, eds. Moreman, C. M. and Rushton, C. J., Jefferson, NC: McFarland, pp. 77-92. (Co-authored with Laura MacDonald).
- Datta, Ronjon Paul, Frauley, Jonathan, and Pearce, Frank. 2010. Situation Critical: For a Critical, Reflexive, Realist, Emancipatory Social Science, Journal of Critical Realism Vol. 9 (2): 227-247.
- Datta, Ronjon Paul. 2010. From Political Emergencies and States of Exception to Exceptional States and Emergent Politics: A Neo-Durkheimian Alternative to Agamben. Durkheim and Violence, International Social Science Journal, UNESCO: Paris and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 169-183.
- Datta, Ronjon Paul. 2008. Politics and Existence: Totems, Dispositifs and some Striking Parallels between Durkheim and Foucault’, Journal of Classical Sociology, Vol. 8 (2), pp. 285-307.
- Datta, Ronjon Paul. 2007. From Foucault’s Genealogy to Aleatory Materialism: Realism, Nominalism and Politics. Critical Realism and the Social Sciences: Heterodox Elaborations, (eds.) Jon Frauley and Frank Pearce, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 273-295.
Key Awards
- Humanities Research Group Fellowship, Faculty of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, The University of Windsor, (2018-2019).
- Innovation Award (Recruitment), Faculty of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, The University of Windsor (2015).
- Bill Meloff Memorial Teaching Award, The Department of Sociology,The University of Alberta (2013).
- Governor General of Canada Academic Gold Medal (2008).
- University Medal for Outstanding Graduate Work – Doctoral Level, Carleton University (2008).
Academic Society Involvement
- Co-founder and member of the Organizing Committee for the Canadian Network of Durkheimian Studies, a Canadian Sociological Association Research Cluster
- Associate Editor at The Canadian Journal of Sociology
- Editorial Collective Member, Annual Review of Interdisciplinary Justice Research
- Member of the International Advisory Panel for Durkheimian Studies/Études Durkheimiennes (Oxford & Paris)
- Member, Social Theory, and Economic Sociology Research Clusters, Canadian Sociological Association