This timely and comprehensive collection covers the contribution and significance of the famed Russian social and cultural theorist, Mikhail M. Bakhtin (1895-1975), as well as the work of other central members of the so-called ′Bakhtin Circle′, especially Voloshinov and Medvedev. The material is organized thematically to provide a contextual basis of Bakhtin′s thought and his central influences, including an investigation of the key concepts in Bakhtin′s work (such as aesthetics, carnival, dialogism, the chronotope, and ethics); the major debates and interpretations around Bakhtin′s writings; comparisons between Bakhtin and other significant sociocultural theorists, notably Foucault, Derrida, Habermas and Gramsci; and appropriations and applications of Bakhtin′s ideas in such diverse fields as anthropology, geography, cultural studies and psychology. This unparalleled collection provides readers with the best secondary work on Bakhtin. It enriches our understanding of this prolific and multi-dimensional figure whose contribution stretches over the fields of cultural studies, linguistics, social philosophy, sociology and beyond.