Michael Mayerfeld Bell is Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Community and Environmental Sociology, and Director of the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems University of Wisconsin-Madison, Professor 2006 to present. Principally an environmental sociologist, he also conducts research on culture, economic sociology, sustainable agriculture, community, place, rural society, inequality, gender, the body, democracy, and social theory. Two central themes can be heard in all of his work: dialogics and the sociology of "nature," broadly conceived. Mike is the author or co-author of eight books, including Childerley: Nature and Morality in a Country Village(University of Chicago Press, 1994), which was co-winner of the 1995 Outstanding Book Award of the Sociology of Culture Section of the American Sociological Association. Previously, he worked as a field geologist, and an environmental writer, and won an American Library Association award in 1985 for The Face of Connecticut: People, Geology, and the Land. Mike continues to have a second life as a part-time composer of songs, fiddle tunes, and classical music. He also plays mandolin in an old-time string band, the Barn Owl Band, which has appeared on the National Public Radio show, A Prairie Home Companion. Loka Ashwood is completing her Ph.

D. in Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work focuses on environmental, agricultural, and rural issues. In Rural Sociology and Agriculture and Human Values, Loka has published findings that she gathered while living in or working with communities. Her next book on corporations, disengagement from the government, and land rights is under contract with Yale University Press.