Main Content
Lisa Hoffman, Ph.D.
Professor
Education
2000 Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D.
1993 Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, M.A.
1992 China Regional Studies, University of Washington, M.A.
1998 Philosophy, Yale University, B.A.
Selected Works | Curriculum Vitae
Contact
Pinkerton Building, 307
Campus Box 358437
(253) 692-5895
hoffmanl@uw.edu
Lisa M. Hoffman (she/her/hers) came to UW Tacoma in the fall of 2002. She received her BA in Philosophy from Yale University (1988), her MA in China Regional Studies from UW Seattle's Jackson School of International Studies (1992) and her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology at UC Berkeley (2000).
She defines her interdisciplinary and yet anthropological work as anthropology of the urban. Broadly speaking, her scholarship has focused on questions of power, governing and social change, with a particular interest in subjectivity and its intersections with spatiality. Geographically, the majority of her work has been located in urban China, with an extension of these organizing questions into other realms in the United States, such as homelessness, ethnic identity, and the molecularization of life.
Her analytical approach has been strongly influenced by the work of Michel Foucault – especially in terms of how she thinks about power, sources of authority, and subject formation processes. In all research projects, she examines practices, techniques, and mechanisms of governing that are not confined to institutional or sovereign spaces. In addition, her scholarship asks questions about the mutual constitution of spatiality and subjectivity, whether in global city-building, second-generation Japanese American urban identity, or relationships between biomedical ecosystems and “local cultures.”
Major past projects include:
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- professionals/ism and volunteers/ism in urban China
- anthropology of neoliberalism
- relations between spatiality and subjectivity in urban situations/transformations
- regimes of green urbanisms and rural urbanization in China
- experiences of homelessness and issues of subject formation
- spatiality of identity formation for second-generation Japanese Americans
Her work is published widely in journals such as Economy and Society; Territory, Politics, Governance; IJURR, Pacific Affairs, and Hau. Book publications are Patriotic Professionalism in Urban China: Fostering Talent (2010, Temple Univ Press), and a co-edited volume with Heather Merrill, Spaces of Danger: Culture and Power in the Everyday (2015, University of Georgia Press; volume builds on the unique cultural marxist approach of geographer Allan Pred).
Most recently, Becoming Nisei: Japanese American Urban Lives in Prewar Tacoma (2020), co-authored with historian Mary Hanneman, was published by University of Washington Press. Based on over forty interviews with second-generation Japanese Americans (Nisei) who were born and grew up in Tacoma prior to wartime incarceration, it examines identity and community formation through analytical lenses of spatiality and transnationalism.
Her current project, “Precision Medicine and Contemporary Formations of Life”, engages science and technology studies and considers how the broad field termed “precision medicine” is shaping contemporary practices of living. This new project asks, how are the accelerated molecularization and genomic understandings of life shifting ideas of illness and risk, while also producing new regimes of healthful living and new forms of machine-generated truths? The project is located in the Seattle area, which is said to have a “collaborative” genomic and biotech research ecosystem, again raising scholarly questions about intersections of spatiality and subjectivity as well as how the specification of subjects is related to governmental rationalities and regimes of living.
She has taught courses ranging from Gender and the Urban Landscape to Pacific Rim Cities to Analyzing Community. Classes focus on social/cultural formations, power relations in myriad forms, and contemporary Asia. Having spent many years doing research and living in China and Hong Kong, Lisa encourages students to study abroad and learn languages (she speaks Chinese).
When she is not working, she loves spending time with her family, dogs, and friends, especially when all can be outdoors and active or relaxing with good food. Lisa also serves on community boards.
Publications
2021 | “Structural Erasure of Japanese Americans in Pre-WWII Tacoma, WA: Working to Imagine Alternative Futures” coauthor Mary Hanneman, in Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Cities and Landscapes in the Pacific Rim, Yang and Taufen eds., Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-H-and-book-of-Sustainable-Citie… |
2020 | Becoming Nisei: Japanese American Urban Lives in Prewar Tacoma, coauthored with Mary Hanneman, University of Washington Press. https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295748221/becoming-nisei/ |
2020 |
“Volunteering for the Environment in China: The Urban as a Terrain of Problematization” in HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, Vol. 10, No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1086/71209 |
2019 |
“Invasion and Citizen Mobilization: Urban Natures in Dalian, China.” In Grounding Urban Natures: Histories and Futures of Urban Ecologies, edited by Henrik Ernstson and Sverker Sorlin, 201-221, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/grounding-urban-natures |
2017 |
“Urban Studies and Thinking Topologically”, co-author Jim Thatcher, in Territory, Politics, Governance. Accepted, June 2017 https://doi-org.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/10.1080/21622671.2017.1351… |
2017 |
“Doing Good’: Affect, Neoliberalism, and Responsibilization among Volunteers in China and the US” with Hope Reidun St. John, in Assembling Neoliberalism: Expertise, Practices, Subjects, Edited by Vaughan Higgins and Wendy Larner, Palgrave Macmillan USA: 243-262. https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137582034 |
2015 |
Spaces of Danger: Culture and Power in the Everyday, co-edited with Heather Merrill, University of Georgia Press; volume builds on the unique cultural marxist approach of geographer Allan Pred. https://ugapress.org/book/9780820348773/spaces-of-danger/ |
2015 |
“Serving and Providing for Those ‘In Need’: ‘Intermediary’ Spaces and Practices of Liaising, Collaborating, and Mobilizing in Urban China” in New Mentalities of Government in China, edited by Elaine Jeffreys and David Bray, Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315688848-1/new… |
2014 |
“The Urban, Politics, and Subject Formation” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 38(5); pp. 1576-1588. https://www.ijurr.org/article/the-urban-politics-and-subject-formation/ |
2013 |
“Decentralization as a Mode of Governing the Urban in China: Reforms in Welfare Provisioning and the Rise of Volunteerism,” in Pacific Affairs 86(4) ; pp. 835-855. https://pacificaffairs.ubc.ca/articles/decentralization-as-a-mode-of-go… |
2011 |
“Contemporary Technologies of City-Building in China: Urban “Modeling” and Regimes of Green Urbanisms” in Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global, Ananya Roy and Aihwa Ong eds., The Studies in Urban and Social Change Book Series, Blackwell; pp. 55-76. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781444346800.ch2 |
2010 |
Patriotic Professionalism in Urban China: Fostering Talent, Temple University Press. |
2009 |
“Governmental Rationalities of Environmental City-Building in Contemporary China” in China’s Governmentalities: Governing Change, Changing Government, Elaine Jeffreys, ed., Routledge Studies on China in Transition; pp. 107-124. https://www.routledge.com/Chinas-Governmentalities-Governing-Change-Cha… |
2008 |
“Dignity and Indignation: How People Experiencing Homelessness View Services and Providers” co-author, Brian Coffey, The Social Science Journal, Volume 45, Number 2: pp. 207-222. Selected by publisher for inclusion in Elsevier’s FLASH newsletter. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222050305_Dignity_and_Indignat… |
2006 |
“Autonomous Choices and Patriotic Professionalism: On Governmentality in Late- Socialist China” Economy and Society Volume 34, Number 4, special section on China and Governmentality Studies, Elaine Jeffreys and Gary Sigley eds., pp. 550-570. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03085140600960815 |