Michael Mayerfeld Bell

Michael Bell is an American sociologist, author, and musician. He is currently Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Community and Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is Chair of the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology. In addition, Bell served as Director of UW-Madison's Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems (CIAS) from 2011 to 2019. Created in 1989, CIAS is a research center for sustainable agriculture programs that respond to the needs of farmers and citizens.

Bell is best known for his work in developing a dialogic approach to sociology and environmental sociology. His most recent major work is ''City of the Good: Nature, Religion, and the Ancient Search for What is Right'' (Princeton, 2018) which traces the tension between pagan and bourgeois traditions of nature and religion that emerged with the rise of cities and empires. He is also the author of ''Childerley: Nature and Morality in a Country Village'', which won the 1995 Best Book Award in the Sociology of Culture from the American Sociological Association, and of ''Farming for Us All: Practical Agriculture and the Cultivation of Sustainability'', which won an Outstanding Academic Title award from the American Library Association. Bell is as well the lead author of ''An Invitation to Environmental Sociology'', a textbook now in its sixth edition.

In the area of agroecology, Bell has worked with the soil scientist William Bland and the agronomist Stéphane Bellon to develop holon agroecology, an approach that emphasizes the role of context in agroecological relations and argues that we can learn from context without universalization. Along with his co-author Jason Orne, Bell makes a related argument for a "multilogical" approach to qualitative methods in ''An Invitation to Qualitative Fieldwork'' (Routledge, 2015).

Drawing on the dialogic philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, Bell first developed the notion of "mutlilogics" in ''The Strange Music of Social Life'' (Temple, 2011). Bell applies multilogical method to a classical composition of his, "Assumptions," which invites improvisation from classical musicians in order to argue against "total explanation" and the desire for complete predictability in sociology. Bell contends that sociology should equally welcome the "dictability" of the strange. Ten scholars respond in the book, including Judith Blau, John Levi Martin, Andrew Abbott, Shamus Khan, Diana Crane, Vanina Leschziner, and Marc Steinberg. The book concludes with Bell's response to the responses.

Michael Bell is a mandolinist, guitarist and composer of grassroots and classical music, and has appeared with the Barn Owl Band on A Prairie Home Companion. He currently performs with Graminy, a Wisconsin-based "class-grass" ensemble and with the Elm Duo, a duet with his daughter.

Notable publications

*Bell, Michael M., Loka L. Ashwood, Isaac Sohn Leslie, and Laura Hanson Schlachter. 2021
An Invitation to Environmental Sociology
6th edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
*Legun, Katharine, Julie Keller, Michael M. Bell, and Michael S. Carolan, eds. 2020
The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Sociology
2 volumes. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
*Bell, Michael M. 2018
City of the Good: Nature, Religion, and the Ancient Search for What Is Right
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
*Orne, Jason and Michael M. Bell. 2015
An Invitation to Qualitative Fieldwork
New York and London: Routledge.
*Bell, Michael M. and others. 2011
The Strange Music of Social Life: A Dialogue on Dialogic Sociology.
Ann Goetting, ed. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
*Bell, Michael M. 2009. “The Problem of the Original Capitalist.�

41(6): 1276–1282.
*Bland, William L. and Michael M. Bell. 2007. “A Holon Approach to Agroecology.�
International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability.
5(4): 280–294.
*Campbell, Hugh; Michael M. Bell, and Margaret Finney, eds. 2006

Rural Studies Series of the Rural Sociological Society. College Station, PA: Penn State University Press.
*Bell, Michael M.; with Donna Bauer, Sue Jarnagin, and Greg Peter. 2004

Rural Studies Series of the Rural Sociological Society. College Station, PA: Penn State University Press.
*Bell, Michael M. and Fredrick Hendricks, eds., with Azril Bacal. 2003
Walking Towards Justice: Democratization in Rural Life
Research in Rural Sociology and Development book series. Amsterdam and New York: JAI/Elsevier.
*Bell, Michael M. and Michael Gardiner, editors. 1998
Bakhtin and the Human Sciences: No Last Words.
London: Sage.
*Bell, Michael M. 1997. “The Ghosts of Place,�
Theory and Society
26:813-836.
*Bell, Michael M. 1994

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
*Bell, Michael M. 1985

Hartford, CT: Connecticut Geological and Natural History Survey.

References

External links

Homepage for Michael Bell
*Music homepage fo
Michael Bell

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bell, Michael Mayerfeld
University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty
Writers from Wisconsin
1957 births
Living people
American sociologists
Environmental sociologists
Rural sociologists