In a lively introduction Gardiner and Bell discuss Bakhtin′s significance as a major intellectual figure and situate his ideas within current trends and developments in social theory.
Michael E Gardiner is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, The University of Western Ontario, London, Canada
Michael Mayerfeld Bell is Professor of Community and Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For his day job, he is principally an environmental sociologist and a social theorist, focusing on dialogics, the sociology of nature, and social justice. These concerns for the world have led him to studies of agroecology, the body, community, consumption, culture, development, food, democracy, economic sociology, gender, inequality, participation, place, politics, rurality, the sociology of music, and more. He is also a part-time composer of grassroots and classical music, and a mandolinist, guitarist, and singer.