Steve G. Hoffman
Assistant Professor
Education: Ph.D, Northwestern University
Research Interests: Organizations, Social Psychology,
Theory, Science and Technology, Qualitative Methods
Recent Courses:
Classical Sociological Theory
Contemporary Social Theory (graduate and undergraduate)
Organizational Sociology (undergraduate)
Organizational Theory (graduate)
Bio: Steve G. Hoffman is a social theorist and ethnographer whose research lies at the intersection of organizational studies, social psychology, and science and technology studies. His primary research develops an organizational and interpretive approach to how simulation techniques and technologies, and scientific knowledge more broadly, are imagined, made legitimate, and disseminated across complex organizational fields. Most recently, this has lead Hoffman to write about how academic capitalism is remaking 21st century academic culture and practice.
At a more abstract level, Hoffman studies the social and organizational processes that individuals and groups use to determine the relationship between cultural concepts (e.g. reality, simulation, intelligence, justice, fairness, truth in politics), formalized knowledge, and decision making. In addition to his work on science, then, he has also studied how partisan voters think about the choices available to them in elections, how employment discrimination litigants think about fairness and justice after engaging in prolonged legal battles, and how athletes think about formal competition while developing altruistic relationships in training.
For Steve's CV and links to many of his publications, please visit his web page.
Representative Publications:
Berrey, Ellen, Steve G. Hoffman, and Laura Beth Nielsen. Forthcoming [2012]. “Situated Justice: A Contextual Analysis of Fairness
and Inequality in Employment Discrimination Litigation.” Law & Society Review.
Forthcoming [2011]. “The New Tools of the Science Trade: Contested Knowledge Production and the Conceptual Vocabularies of Academic Capitalism.” Social Anthropology.
Prasad, M., A. Perrin, K. Bezila, S.G. Hoffman, K. Kindleberger, K. Manturuk, A. Powers. 2009. “There Must be a Reason: Osama, Saddam, and Inferred Justification.” Sociological Inquiry. 79, 2: 142-162.
2006. “How to Punch Someone and Stay Friends: An Inductive Theory of Simulation.” Sociological Theory. 24, 2: 170-193.
email: sgh [at] buffalo [dot] edu
