Michael H. Agar was a world-renowned independent scholar in applied anthropology. His influence on the field of anthropology, and on social science more generally, was profound, ranging from linguistics to anthropology of the first world, drug studies, complexity studies, organizational analysis, and research methodology. An honorary Woodrow Wilson Fellow, NIH Career Award recipient, and former Fulbright Senior Specialist, he was professor emeritus at the University of Maryland, College Park, with adjunct appointments in Speech Communication and Comparative Literature, as well as an associate at Antropocaos at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina. He was appointed Distinguished Scholar at the International Institute of Qualitative Methods at the University of Alberta and Research Professor in Biology at the University of New Mexico.

Publications include articles in journals from the fields of anthropology, linguistics, folklore and oral history, sociology, organization research, psychology, psychiatry, public policy, artificial intelligence, complexity, intercultural communication, and the substance use and transportation fields. He has also written for general magazines like Smithsonian and The New Mexico Mercury and done op-ed pieces for various newspapers. His books include some that are considered classics and are still in print decades after publication: Ripping and Running, The Professional Stranger, Angel Dust, Speaking of Ethnography, Independents Declared, and Language Shock: Understanding the Culture of Conversation. A recent book, a policy critique based on his decades in the drug field, is Dope Double Agent: The Naked Emperor on Drugs. His most recent book, The Lively Science: Remodeling Human Social Research (2013), is an accessible description of the historical roots and modern logic of a style of human social research closer to intentionality and lived experience of the human subjects who are the point of it all.