Bakhtin and the Human Sciences

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.

What are we to make of Bakhtin? Nearly twenty years after his death, the full richness of his ideas has still not been digested. For many people working in the social sciences he remains a mysterious and impenetrable writer. Many are conscious hat his ideas are relevant for sociology and cultural studies, but would be hard pressed to give chapter and verse. Others regard Bakhtin to be figure who contributed to the literary and philologic fields of study.This accessible and thoughtful text aims to demonstrate the relevance of Bakhtin to the human sciences. It argues that most of the current literature has been characterized by a superficial appropriation of Bakhtinian ideas and neologisms. What has been neglected is a serious engagement with his core ideas and a sustained reflection on their implications for social and cultural theory. A lively introduction discusses the importance of Bakhtin as a major intellectual figure and situates his ideas in current theoretical trends and developments. This is followed by essays from a diverse group of contributors, organized around the four main themes in Bakhtin′s work: dialogics, carnivals, conversations and ethics and everyday life. Bakhtin and the Human Sciences is an accurate and insightful attempt to extend Bakhtin′s ideas into the mainstream social sciences and to reconsider Bakhtin as a social thinker, not just a literary theorist.

• INTRODUCTIONSBakhtin and the Human Sciences - Michael Gardiner and Michael Mayerfeld BellAn IntroductionPART TWO: DIALOGICSA Bakhtinian Psychology - John Shotter and Michael BilligFrom Out of the Heads of Individuals and into the Dialogues between ThemThe Dialogics of Narrative Identity - Jennifer De PeuterCulture as Dialogue - Michael Mayerfeld BellBakhtin and the Dialogic of Society - Dorothy SmithAn InvestigationPART THREE: CARNIVALSThe Grotesque of the Body Electric - Peter HitchcockBakhtin′s Dialogical Body Politics - Hwa Yol JungKnowing the Subaltern - Michael Bernard-DonalsBakhtin, Carnival and the Other Voice of the Human SciencesPART FOUR: CONVERSATIONS′The Incomparable Monster of Solipsism′ - Michael GardinerBakhtin and Merleau-PontyBakhtin and Mannheim - Raymond A MorrowAn Introductory DialogueThe Death and Rebirth of the Author - Ian BurkittThe Bakhtin Circle and Bourdieu on Individuality, Language and RevolutionPART FIVE: ETHICS AND EVERYDAY LIVESBakhtinian Perspectives on ′Everyday Life′ Sociology - Courtney BenderThe Shock of the Old - Barry SandywellMikhail Bakhtin′s Contributions to the Theory of Time and AlterityThe Norms of Answerability - Greg NielsenBakhtin and the Fourth Postulate