Michael Bell

Michael Mayerfeld Bell is the Philip David Lowe and Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Community and Environmental Sociology. He is also a faculty associate in Environmental Studies, Religious Studies, and Agroecology. Michael’s most recent book is Our Blood: The Social Experience of Heritas (University of Chicago Press, 2026, co-authored with Loka Ashwood and Jay Orne). Other recent volumes include the 2nd edition of Farming for Us All: Practical Agriculture and the Cultivation of Sustainability (Penn State University Press, 2024), the Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Sociology (Cambridge, 2020; Legun, Keller, Carolan, and Bell, eds.), the 6th edition of An Invitation to Environmental Sociology (Sage, 2020; Bell, Ashwood, Leslie, and Schlachter), and City of the Good: Nature, Religion, and the Ancient Search for What Is Right (Princeton, 2018). He is currently working on the 7th edition of An Invitation to Environmental Sociology (Sage, 2027, co-authored with Loka Ashwood, Taimur Ahmad, and Tian Tian Wedgwood Young).

Michael’s sociological work focuses on three themes: environmental sociology, agroecology, and community. A central theme that weaves through all (or nearly all!) of his work is the social meaning of nature, and especially its relationship to the social organization of inequality. He has published on the relationship of ideas of nature to inequities of class, race, gender, sexualities, and the rural, tracing their social and political use in debates over environment, religion, heritage, place, agriculture, food, and more.

Michael is also the lab lead for the Soil Health and Agroecological Living Lab (SHALL) within the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology.

In the evenings, Mike is a prolific composer and performer of grassroots and classical music. For more on his work and passions, see his website: www.michael-bell.net.

Education: Ph.D., 1992, Yale University

Professor Bell’s Curriculum Vitae

Personal Website

Books:

• An Invitation to Qualitative Fieldwork: A Multilogical Approach
• The Strange Music of Social Life: A Dialogue on Dialogic Sociology
• An Invitation to Environmental Sociology
• Country Boys: Masculinity and Rural Life
• Farming For Us All: Practical Agriculture and the Cultivation of Sustainability
• Walking Toward Justice: Democratization in Rural Life
• Bakhtin and the Human Sciences: No Last Words
• Childerley: Nature and Morality in a Country Village
• The Face of Connecticut: People, Geology, and the Land

Articles:

• Bell, Michael. “The Problem of the Original Capitalist.” Environment and Planning. (2009): 1-16 [173 kb pdf]
• Bell, Michael, et al. “The productivity of variability: an agroecological hypothesis.” International Journal Of Agricultural Sustainability. 6(2008): 233-235 [57 kb pdf]
• Bell, Michael. “In The River: A Socio-Historical Account Of Dialogue And Diaspora.” Humanity & Society. 31(2007): 210-234 [371 kb pdf]
• Bell, Michael. “The two-ness of rural life and the ends of rural scholarship.” Journal Of Rural Studies. 23(2007): 402-415 [178 kb pdf]
• Bland, William and Michael Bell. “A holon approach to agroecology.” International Journal Of Agricultural Sustainability. 5(2007): 280-294 [535 kb pdf]
• Bell, Michael. “Dialogue and Isodemocracy: an Essay on the Social Conditions of Good Talk.” International Review of Sociology. 11(2001): 281-298 [159 kb pdf]
• Bell, Michael and Phillip Lowe. “Regulated freedoms: the market and the state, agriculture and the environment.” Journal of Rural Studies. 16(2000): 285-294 [115 kb pdf]
• Bell, Michael. “The Dialogue Of Solidarities, Or Why The Lion Spared Androcles*.” Sociological Focus 31(1998): 181-199 [1254 kb pdf]
• Bell, Michael. 1997. “The Ghosts of Place.” Theory and Society 26: 813-836. [2245 kb pdf]

Classes:

C&E Soc 541: Social Behavior and Natural Resources
Agroecology 702: The Multifunctionality Of Agriculture
Agroecology 710: Agroecology Seminar
Agroecology 710: Agroecology Seminar
C&E Soc 754: Qualitative Research Methods in Sociology

Course Syllabi:

Agroecology 702: The Multifunctionality Of Agriculture [1063 kb pdf]
Agroecology 720: Agroecology Field Study [225 kb pdf]
C&E Soc 748: Environmental Sociology [119 kb pdf]
C&E Soc 754: Qualitative Research Methods in Sociology [108 kb pdf]