Lisa Hoffman, Ph.D.

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 science and technology studies, ethnic identity, and homelessness.

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:

• 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.

She has two current projects. One is co-editing (with Jennifer Hubbert and Zhilin Liu) the SAGE Handbook on Urbanization in China.  This Handbook aims to provide “state of the field” pieces that assess what we know about a topic, including debates in the literature and dominant conceptual tools and arguments.  It has twenty-eight chapters from scholars around the world and covers topics from the semi-colonial urban and land reforms to zones, consumption, and policing.  This Handbook not only provides a focus on human experience, but also offers critical inquiry into the theories and concepts mobilized to understand urban China. 

Her current research project - “Being ‘high risk’ for cancer: personal genetics, the present self and managing future disease” -engages science and technology studies and considers how genetics and precision health are shaping subjectivity and contemporary practices of living. It is concerned with what is at stake when cancer risk assessment scores and other more personalized prevention practices (e.g., genetic testing) become increasingly commonplace, expanding the number of people identified as at-risk.  The project includes ethnographic fieldwork with individuals identified as high risk for cancer, clinicians doing early detection work, and experts (e.g., in nutrigenomics, genetic counseling) who help people manage their present lives for a potential future illness. It also includes research on institutional alliances that lead to the production of knowledge about cancer prevention as well as computational practices producing health risk scores. 

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.