Donati was born in Budrio, a small town of medieval origin 17 km from Bologna (Italy).

In the same years, he lectured at the universities of Geneva, Gratz, Harvard, Chicago, Paris Sorbonne, Warsaw, Moscow, Navarra.

[2] He has received the Doctorate Honoris Causa from the Lateran University (Rome) in 2009[3] and from the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (Barcelona) in 2017 for his studies on the family and social policy.

Donati's sociology is oriented to show how a relational society is constantly emerging through a morphogenetic process.

The symbolic code of subsidiarity differentiates itself from other ones (functionalist or of other kind), because it does not confer the primacy to a systemic function, but to the dignity of the human being.

Donati's sociology can be viewed as quite close to the versions based on network analysis (like Nick Crossley's),[16] while it is in radical disagreement with the sociologies that Donati defines as ‘relationalist’ (instead of relational), meaning relativist, pragmatist, processualist, characterized by a flat ontology, like Jan Fuhse’s,[17] François Dépelteau’s, Chris Powell’s[18] and many others.

The importance of the ontological perspective goes back to the humanistic interests with which Donati started his journey, and is now reflected in the issue of how to trace the distinctions between the human beings and hybrids, actants, post-humans, trans-humans, smart sentient robots.

[19] His perspective must now confront the advent of the digital era with the increasing influence of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics as generator of different kinds of social relations.

[20] In the years 2000-2018 Donati intensified the convergence with critical realism, which he had already adopted since the research of the 1970s, and with the idea of social morphogenesis, applied to topics such as family, business, associations, citizenship, civil society.

Being a critical realist, his work has been criticised by other relational sociologists adopting different approaches, such as François Dépelteau and Chris Powell, Gholam Reza Azarian and Jan Fuhse.

For Gholam Reza Azarian,[22] Donati’s paradigm does not represent a significant contribution that adds something relevant in respect to Harrison White’s relational sociology.