Bell, Michael M. and Michael Gardiner, editors. 1998. Bakhtin and the Human Sciences: No Last Words. London: Sage.
from: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/book.aspx?pid=101728
Description:
Bakhtin and the Human Sciences demonstrates the abundance of ideas Bakhtin's thought offers to the human sciences, and reconsiders him as a social theory thinker, not just a literary theorist. The contributors hail from many disciplines and their essays' implications extend into other fields in the human sciences. The volume emphasizes Bakhtin's work on dialogue, carnival, ethics and everyday life, as well as the relationship between Bakhtin's ideas and those of other important social theorists.
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.
Bell, Michael M. 1994. Childerley: Nature and Morality in a Country Village. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
from: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/12465.ctl
In Childerley a twelfth-century church rises above the rolling quilt of pastures and grain fields. Volvos and tractors share the winding country roads. Here, in this small village two hours from London, stockbrokers and stock-keepers live side by side in thatched cottages, converted barns, and modern homes.
Why do these villagers find country living so compelling? Why, despite our urban lives, do so many of us strive for a home in the country, closer to nature? Michael Bell suggests that we are looking for a natural conscience: an unshakeable source of identity and moral value that is free from social theory interests--comfort and solace and a grounding of self in a world of conflict and change.
During his interviews with over a hundred of Childerley's 475 residents--both working-class and professional--Bell heard time and again of their desire to be "country people" and of their anxiety over their class identities. Even though they often knowingly participate in class discrimination themselves--and see their neighbors doing the same--most Childerleyans feel a deep moral ambivalence over class. Bell argues they find in class and its conflicts the restraints and workings of social interests and feel that by living "close to nature" they have an alternative: the identity of a "country person," a "villager that the natural consicence gives."
Yet there are clear parallels between the ways in which the villagers conceive of nature and of social theory life, and Bell traces these parallels across Childerleyans' perspectives on class, gender, and politics. Where conventional theories would suggest that what the villagers see as nature is a reflection of how they see society, and that the natural conscience must be a product of social theory interests, Bell argues that ideological processes are more complex. Childerleyans' understandings of society and of the natural conscience shape each other, says Bell, through a largely intuitive process he calls resonance.
social theory, michael m. bell, agroecology, bakhtin, sustainable agriculture