- Department of Sociology
King's University College at The University of Western Ontario
266 Epworth Avenue
London, ON N6A 2M3
Canada
Dr. Anisha Datta
King's University College at Western University, Sociology, Department Member
- Critical Social Theory, Gender Studies, Ideology and Discourse Analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis, Marxist political economy, Biopower and Biopolitics, and 60 moreSociology of Ideas, Historical Sociology, India, Global and Comparative Sociology, Michel Foucault, Critical Theory, Women's Studies, Dalit studies, Rabindranath Tagore, Social Inequality, Postcolonial Theory, Social Theory, Caste, Premchand, Sociology of Literature, Neoliberalism, Empire, Colonialism, Settler Colonialism & Its Legacies, Decolonisation, History of Decolonization, British Imperialism, Imperialism, Sociology of Culture, Consumer Culture, Cultural Studies, Cultural History, Cultural Theory, Global Studies, Hindi Cinema, Indian Cinema, Bengali Cinema, Cultural Nationalism, Multiculturalism, Sociology of Religion, Political Sociology, Social History, History of Social Sciences, Gender and Sexuality, Political Philosophy, Media Studies, Modern South Asia, Modern Bengal, Women and Contemporary Indian Cinema, Indian Feminism, Southern Theory, Diaspora Studies, South Asia, Hindu nationalism, Hindutva, Secularism, Postcolonial Studies, Sociology, Colorism, Cricket, Subaltern Studies, Edward Said, Judith Butler, Citizenship and Identity, and Political Economyedit
- My research interests fall in the broad areas of social and cultural theory, postcolonial studies, diaspora and trans... moreMy research interests fall in the broad areas of social and cultural theory, postcolonial studies, diaspora and transnational studies, neoliberalism, South Asian studies, consumer culture, political economy and historical sociology. My pursuit of sociological wisdom has been marked by academic bi-culturalism (being trained in Canada and India) and by interdisciplinary orientation. I view myself as a civic sociologist, whose primary task is to generate public debates on key issues of social ethos and justice.edit
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Research Interests: Political Economy, Neoliberalism, Consumer Culture, Immaterial Labour, David Harvey, and 11 moreKarl Marx, Happiness and Well Being, Neo-liberalism, Zygmunt Bauman, Biopower and Biopolitics, Maurizio Lazzarato, Wendy Brown, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Nikolas Rose, Therapeutic culture, and Franco Bifo Berardi
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The imagery of ‘otherness’ played a significant role in modern Europe's cognisance of the orient, the colonised, the feminine and the homosexual which were viewed as threats to the values of a ‘rational, progressive and civilised’... more
The imagery of ‘otherness’ played a significant role in modern Europe's cognisance of the orient, the colonised, the feminine and the homosexual which were viewed as threats to the values of a ‘rational, progressive and civilised’ society. But how was ‘the non-European other’ represented in classical sociology's canons authored by the trinity of Durkheim, Weber and Marx? The paper focuses on Durkheim's examination of the Hindu sati as an altruistic suicide, Weber's theorisation that the European Protestant Christianity could only produce rationality and capitalism, and Marx's non-reflexive neglect of the progressive pre-modern from India's pre-colonial past. A critical post-colonial reading of the selected texts identifies the ahistorical, orientalist, racialised, colonialist and historicist fault lines that crisscross the sociological canons. The time is ripe to rectify the denial of subjecthood to the ‘non-western other’ that we often encounter in the sociological canons. The paper concludes that the ‘non-western other’ is capable of being a subject in her own right. The critical engagement with the sociological canons is a small step towards building the ground for a more reflexive and historically specific global sociology in the post-colonial era. As an intellectual endeavour of the post-colonial era, global sociology should be vigilant about global capitalism's tendency towards obliterating the diverse ways of thinking and acting.
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This essay looks at how a recent television commercial simulates and plays on the dominant aesthetic, careerist, consumerist, nationalist and entertainment/leisure desires of consuming female subjects in India. The product advertised here... more
This essay looks at how a recent television commercial simulates and plays on the dominant aesthetic, careerist, consumerist, nationalist and entertainment/leisure desires of consuming female subjects in India. The product advertised here is a fairness (bleaching) face cream, ‘Fair & Lovely’. The advertisement appeals to a set of prevalent gender and colour prejudices by ‘seducing’ the careerist and consumerist desires of educated young Indian women. Depicting the life of an ‘ordinary’ consuming subject from an unknown city neighbourhood to the globalized information highways of satellite television, the advertisement projects a hyperreal world in which gendered occupational barriers have apparently withered away, courtesy of commodity consumption. The advertisement is critically analysed as a pastiche of seductive simulacra concerning the desire for ‘fairness’ in the midst of ‘unfair’ cultural prejudices, social contradictions and apolitical commercial ideologies.
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This presentation interrogates the possibilities to rethink and reformulate the knowledge system, practices and identities which laid the foundation of colonial hegemony in Canada.
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Since the nineteenth century, there is a history of the politicization of the women’s question in Bengal. In post-colonial period how has the women’s question fared in Bengal – a state which was ruled by a mainstream left party (the... more
Since the nineteenth century, there is a history of the politicization of the women’s question in Bengal. In post-colonial period how has the women’s question fared in Bengal – a state which was ruled by a mainstream left party (the CPI-M), the largest communist party in India from 1977-2011? In broad terms, the paper will attempt to answer this question by taking a critical and close look at three events and the ideologies underpinning these events that took place in the late 20th century Bengal.
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For: The Durkheim-Conundrum: A Reflective Teaching Panel and Discussion
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Do Not Quote without Permission of the Author; Specific value: My project attempts to deepen the understanding of social inequality by focusing on the lived experience forged by social deprivation and discrimination. I examine the lived... more
Do Not Quote without Permission of the Author;
Specific value: My project attempts to deepen the understanding of social inequality by focusing on the lived experience forged by social deprivation and discrimination. I examine the lived experience of low caste individuals in their everyday struggle with market forces in India. The post-1980s neoliberal model of growth has reinforced and exacerbated caste based social inequalities. My ethnographic methodology digs into the relationship between the two variables of caste status and neoliberal market practices. The project is not merely an examination of the continuity in traditional caste based social inequality. Rather, my project attempts to examine how these old casteist practices shape and are being shaped by neo-liberal ideas of rationality and efficiency. In other words, I show how the elastic nature of accommodation between market forces and caste inequality allow them to become strange bed fellows. In fact, they reinforce each other, without abandoning their core assumptions.
Specific value: My project attempts to deepen the understanding of social inequality by focusing on the lived experience forged by social deprivation and discrimination. I examine the lived experience of low caste individuals in their everyday struggle with market forces in India. The post-1980s neoliberal model of growth has reinforced and exacerbated caste based social inequalities. My ethnographic methodology digs into the relationship between the two variables of caste status and neoliberal market practices. The project is not merely an examination of the continuity in traditional caste based social inequality. Rather, my project attempts to examine how these old casteist practices shape and are being shaped by neo-liberal ideas of rationality and efficiency. In other words, I show how the elastic nature of accommodation between market forces and caste inequality allow them to become strange bed fellows. In fact, they reinforce each other, without abandoning their core assumptions.
Do Not Quote without Permission of the Author: Using a comparative-historical lens, the paper will examine the ideological and political implications of defining caste as race. The nineteenth century colonial discourse had conceptualized... more
Do Not Quote without Permission of the Author:
Using a comparative-historical lens, the paper will examine the ideological and political implications of defining caste as race. The nineteenth century colonial discourse had conceptualized caste as race in British India. The rise of professional Oriental scholarship, located in European universities, began to generate new forms of colonial knowledge. This knowledge had a lasting impact in the budding field of anthropology, a field which conceived ‘race’ as a central framework. Drawing on anthropology, the colonial administrators propounded the ‘official view’ of caste, by conceiving the latter in terms of European race theory. In this view, caste became reduced to a number of physical characteristics, and enumerable census identities. Did the colonial discourse of racializing caste, play a role in defining and ruling India? Secondly, what is the relationship of this colonial discourse to the recent demands made by dalit activists that caste based discrimination should be included in the agenda of the UN Conference against Racism? For sure, the internationalization of caste based injustice is a worthy endeavor, in particular if it envisions the annihilation of caste. But, can caste be annihilated by defining it in terms of race? The paper will attempt to answer these three historically intertwined questions.
Using a comparative-historical lens, the paper will examine the ideological and political implications of defining caste as race. The nineteenth century colonial discourse had conceptualized caste as race in British India. The rise of professional Oriental scholarship, located in European universities, began to generate new forms of colonial knowledge. This knowledge had a lasting impact in the budding field of anthropology, a field which conceived ‘race’ as a central framework. Drawing on anthropology, the colonial administrators propounded the ‘official view’ of caste, by conceiving the latter in terms of European race theory. In this view, caste became reduced to a number of physical characteristics, and enumerable census identities. Did the colonial discourse of racializing caste, play a role in defining and ruling India? Secondly, what is the relationship of this colonial discourse to the recent demands made by dalit activists that caste based discrimination should be included in the agenda of the UN Conference against Racism? For sure, the internationalization of caste based injustice is a worthy endeavor, in particular if it envisions the annihilation of caste. But, can caste be annihilated by defining it in terms of race? The paper will attempt to answer these three historically intertwined questions.
For: Technologies and Pedagogies 2014, KUC London Canada
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For: King's Model UN Conference
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Do Not Quote without Permission of the Author: The caste system has been officially abolished under the Indian constitution. However, every eighteen minutes a crime, often violent in nature, is committed in India on a dalit person. As a... more
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The caste system has been officially abolished under the Indian constitution. However, every eighteen minutes a crime, often violent in nature, is committed in India on a dalit person. As a sociologist studying social inequalities and social justice, I find Primo Levi’s thoughts on social ethics to be immensely relevant and illuminating. In Survival in Auschwitz he wrote, “[F]or a country is considered the more civilized the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak or a powerful one too powerful”. Using this philosophy as a guiding light, I examine the role of the Indian state in protecting dalits against caste based violence. Drawing on recent scholarship on violence against dalits, I contend that the Indian state fails to maintain a ‘civilized and just’ social condition in the country. In addition, I focus on the prevailing ‘upper caste’ critique of the affirmative action in India, to show how it goes against the principle of alleviating the harshness of ‘low caste’ birth. In this paper, I also attempt at a productive synthesis of Levi’s thoughts on ethics and the theory of egalitarian liberalism from John Rawls and Amartya Sen. In the end, I argue that literature (e.g., Levi’s writings) provide a viable mode of pursuing critical sociology of social inequality and justice, the essential goal of which is to unpack the irrational contradictions within social and political formations, and to indicate the possibilities of emancipatory human action.
The caste system has been officially abolished under the Indian constitution. However, every eighteen minutes a crime, often violent in nature, is committed in India on a dalit person. As a sociologist studying social inequalities and social justice, I find Primo Levi’s thoughts on social ethics to be immensely relevant and illuminating. In Survival in Auschwitz he wrote, “[F]or a country is considered the more civilized the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak or a powerful one too powerful”. Using this philosophy as a guiding light, I examine the role of the Indian state in protecting dalits against caste based violence. Drawing on recent scholarship on violence against dalits, I contend that the Indian state fails to maintain a ‘civilized and just’ social condition in the country. In addition, I focus on the prevailing ‘upper caste’ critique of the affirmative action in India, to show how it goes against the principle of alleviating the harshness of ‘low caste’ birth. In this paper, I also attempt at a productive synthesis of Levi’s thoughts on ethics and the theory of egalitarian liberalism from John Rawls and Amartya Sen. In the end, I argue that literature (e.g., Levi’s writings) provide a viable mode of pursuing critical sociology of social inequality and justice, the essential goal of which is to unpack the irrational contradictions within social and political formations, and to indicate the possibilities of emancipatory human action.
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Global capitalism keeps increasing the choice between different car models, but limits the choice of employment. Modern industrialization expands the range of goods offered to people, but reduce their access to clean water, unpolluted... more
Global capitalism keeps increasing the choice between different car models, but limits the choice of employment. Modern industrialization expands the range of goods offered to people, but reduce their access to clean water, unpolluted air, and uncontaminated food. These paradoxes are prevalent in varying degrees in both developed and developing countries today. The course will begin with the historical roots of the uneven relationship between developed and developing countries, and then it will proceed to trace the entanglements of these roots with the 21st century global challenges such as the ecological collapse, species loss, climate change, rural crises, urban poverty, mass migration, the growing polarization within and between societies, and the new technology led socioeconomic disruptions.
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Ideas and concepts have sociological significance. The way we conceive and conceptualize relationships, practices and social institutions, have direct consequences for our everyday lives. The theoretical concepts of representation,... more
Ideas and concepts have sociological significance. The way we conceive and conceptualize relationships, practices and social institutions, have direct consequences for our everyday lives. The theoretical concepts of representation, recognition, responsibility and redistribution are four key ideas that bear significant relevance to our one-way journey from infancy to adulthood.
In the stimulating company of theoretical works of various genres, we shall examine the four concepts of representation, recognition, responsibility and redistribution. For instance, through the lens of select theories, we shall examine questions such as: What is the relationship between the social form and the social practice? Could the age of reason fulfill its cherished goals and promises? Is there a danger in equating the familiar and the ‘normal’ with the natural? Do the being and becoming of modernity reveal global fault lines? Is the distant implicated in the local? How does language play a role in socio-cultural construction? Is knowledge objective or situated? Is the idea of ‘Europe’ universal or provincial? What is the relationship between defining and ruling? Can the ‘other’ be represented? Is ‘difference’ dangerous? Does the power flowing out of market, nation-state and bureaucratic imperatives have a ‘normalizing’ effect on society? How does one verify the actual effects of democracy?
The course will be run as a seminar. It aims to stimulate critical reflection on the theories through class discussions, oral presentations, and writing assignments.
In the stimulating company of theoretical works of various genres, we shall examine the four concepts of representation, recognition, responsibility and redistribution. For instance, through the lens of select theories, we shall examine questions such as: What is the relationship between the social form and the social practice? Could the age of reason fulfill its cherished goals and promises? Is there a danger in equating the familiar and the ‘normal’ with the natural? Do the being and becoming of modernity reveal global fault lines? Is the distant implicated in the local? How does language play a role in socio-cultural construction? Is knowledge objective or situated? Is the idea of ‘Europe’ universal or provincial? What is the relationship between defining and ruling? Can the ‘other’ be represented? Is ‘difference’ dangerous? Does the power flowing out of market, nation-state and bureaucratic imperatives have a ‘normalizing’ effect on society? How does one verify the actual effects of democracy?
The course will be run as a seminar. It aims to stimulate critical reflection on the theories through class discussions, oral presentations, and writing assignments.
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"A SOCIOLOGY SPECTACLE IS FOR PEEPS WHO LOVE TO WEAR THE SOCIOLOGICAL SPECS. THE BLOG CAME ALIVE IN MARCH 2014 DUE TO: 1. THE ENTHUSIASTIC SUPPORT AND SINCERE CONTRIBUTIONS FROM A GROUP OF INTRO. TO SOCIOLOGY STUDENTS (2013-14, Soci... more
"A SOCIOLOGY SPECTACLE IS FOR PEEPS WHO LOVE TO WEAR THE SOCIOLOGICAL SPECS.
THE BLOG CAME ALIVE IN MARCH 2014 DUE TO:
1. THE ENTHUSIASTIC SUPPORT AND SINCERE CONTRIBUTIONS FROM A GROUP OF INTRO. TO SOCIOLOGY STUDENTS (2013-14, Soci 1020-574) AT KING’S UNIVERSITY COLLEGE AT WESTERN UNIVERSITY, LONDON
&
2. THE THOROUGH TECHNOLOGICAL INPUTS FROM DAVID THUSS & SCOTT McKENDRICK AT KING’S IT DEPARTMENT"
THE BLOG CAME ALIVE IN MARCH 2014 DUE TO:
1. THE ENTHUSIASTIC SUPPORT AND SINCERE CONTRIBUTIONS FROM A GROUP OF INTRO. TO SOCIOLOGY STUDENTS (2013-14, Soci 1020-574) AT KING’S UNIVERSITY COLLEGE AT WESTERN UNIVERSITY, LONDON
&
2. THE THOROUGH TECHNOLOGICAL INPUTS FROM DAVID THUSS & SCOTT McKENDRICK AT KING’S IT DEPARTMENT"