Mike is principally an environmental sociologist and a social theorist. Three central foci can be found in all of his work: dialogics, the sociology of nature, and social justice. These concerns for the world have led him to studies of culture, agricultural sustainability, consumption, food, participation, democracy, economic sociology, community, place, rurality, inequality, gender, the body, the sociology of music, and more.

Mike likes books and is the author or an editor of seven, three of which have won national awards. His books include:

An Invitation to Environmental Sociology (2009; third edition)

Country Boys: Masculinity and Rural Life (2006)

Farming for Us All: Practical Agriculture and the Cultivation of Sustainability (2004)

Walking Toward Justice: Democratization in Rural Life (2003)

Bakhtin and the Human Sciences: No Last Words (1998)

Childerley: Nature and Morality in a Country Village (1994)

The Face of Connecticut: People, Geology, and the Land (1985)

Currently, Mike is writing a social theory book on dialogue and dialogics and conducting a range of projects on participation, food, and agroecology. He is chair of the Agroecology Graduate Program and a member of the Agroecology Cluster at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as a member of the faculty of the Gaylord Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies and a faculty associate of the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Rural Economy at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom.

Mike has a second life as a composer of contemporary classical and folk music, and as a folk musician. Mike's compositions include pieces for the violin family, the mandolin family, solo piano, symphony orchestra, and various chamber ensembles. The Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society premiered his composition The Wick of the Land, on May 13th, 2007, at a concert of rural-themed music in the Overture Center in Madison, Wisconsin. He is at work on several other chamber works and his first symphony. Mike also continues to write tunes and songs that contibute to the British Isles and Klezmer folk traditions. His classical composition draws much of its inspiration from these traditions as well.

As a performer, Mike mainly favors the mandolin, his vote for the most beautiful instrument in the world. He is an emeritus member of the Iowa-based Barn Owl Band. He appeared with the Barn Owls on the long-running National Public Radio show A Prairie Home Companion in 2002 and in a reprise performance in 2005. The Owls released their first CD, Dance Owl Night, in 2000; their second CD, Barn Owls Live, in 2003; and their third CD, Cloud Forest, in 2006—all of which feature some of Mike's tunes and songs. He currently plays in a variety of semi-irregular trios, including the Wiretappers.