The Strange Music of Social Life: A Dialogue on Dialogic Sociology, with Andrew Abbott, Judith Blau, Diana Crane, Stacy Holman Jones, Shamus Kahn, Vanina Leschziner, John Levi Martin, Christopher McRae, Marc Steinberg, and John Chappell Stowe. 2011, Ann Goetting, ed. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Publisher's blurb: "The Strange Music of Social Life presents a dialogue on dialogic sociology, explored through the medium of music. Sociologist and composer Michael Mayerfeld Bell presents an argument that both sociology and classical music remain largely in the grip of a nineteenth-century totalizing ambition of prediction and control. He provides the refreshing approach of "strangency" to explain a sociology that tries to understand not only the regularities of social life but also the social conditions in which people do what we do not expect.

"Nine important sociologists and musicians respond-often vigorously-to the conversation Bell initiates by raising pivotal questions. The Strange Music of Social Life concludes with Bell's reply to those responses and offers new insight into sociology and music sociology."

Read a sample HERE.

Country Boys: Masculinity and Rural Life (2006, Pennsylvania State University Press and the Rural Studies Series of the Rural Sociological Society; edited by Hugh Campbell, Michael Mayerfeld Bell, and Margaret Finney)

Publisher's blurb: "Rural masculinity is hardly a typical topic for a book. There is something unexpected, faintly disturbing, even humorous about investigating that which has long been seen and yet so often overlooked. But the ways in which we think about and socially organize masculinity are of great significance in the lives of both men and women. In Country Boys we also see that masculinity is no less significant in rural life than in urban life.

"The essays in this volume offer much-needed insight into the myths and stereotypes as well as the reality of the lives of rural men. Interdisciplinary in scope, the contributions investigate what it means to be a farming man, a logging man, or a boy growing up in a country town and how this impacts both men and women in city and country. Chapters cover not only the United States but also Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, giving the book an unusually broad scope."

"Refreshingly progressive...the volume is clearly a commendable achievement....This book may prove to be a seminal collection..." —Sociology

"An engaging overview...the book complicates our understanding of gender in rural places..." —Rural Sociology

Read a sample HERE.

Farming for Us All: Practical Agriculture and the Cultivation of Sustainability (2004, Pennsylvania State University Press and the Rural Studies Series of the Rural Sociological Society; with Susan Jarnagin, Gregory Peter, and Donna Bauer)

Publisher's blurb: "It is easy to feel overwhelmed and depressed by all the threats facing modern agriculture—threats to the environment, to the health and safety of our food, to the economic and cultural viability of farmers and rural communities. Hundreds of thousands of farmers leave their farms every year as the juggernaut of 'big agriculture' plows across our rural landscape. But there are viable alternatives to big agriculture, as many farmers and others involved in agriculture, including consumers, are discovering. In Farming for Us All Michael Mayerfeld Bell offers crucial insight into the future of a viable sustainable agriculture movement in the United States."

"Highly recommended." —Choice

"A seminal text...required reading for academics and activists working in the area of sustainable agriculture."—Rural Sociology

"An excellent text."—Contemporary Sociology

"Informs and challenges...should assume an essential place in the library of anyone interested in the analysis or promotion of sustainable agricultural management." —International Journal of the Sociology of Food and Agriculture

"An accessible narrative that combines a colloquial, sympathetic, yet sophisticated discussion of the broad concerns and controversies facing the sustainable agricultural movement with finely detailed research."—Gastromonica

"If participatory research is this interesting and rewarding more of us should do more of it."—Journal of Rural Studies

"A fair, if passionately supportive assessment of the state of sustainable agriculture in the Heartland today."—Agricultural History

Read a sample chapter HERE.

Walking Toward Justice: Democratization in Rural Life (2003, JAI/Elsevier; co-edited by Michael Mayerfeld Bell and Fred Hendricks, with Azril Bacal)

Publisher's blurb: "Democracy is back, at least as a topic of concern among rural sociologists. The Neoliberal cast of the recent pursuit of globalization in world politics has led to the development of a wide range of critiques united by the same question: what about democracy? .... Many of the best experiments in democratic renewal are taking place in rural areas, or over rural matters, such the civic watershed projects in the United States, the LEADER projects in Europe, and the participatory democracy and participatory development projects from Mozambique to Mexico, all described in the case studies in this volume. Much remains to be done, of course, becuase democracy is not an end-point but a process, always underway, always unfinished, always walking toward justice."