Steve G. Hoffman
Visiting Assistant Professor
Education: Ph.D, Northwestern University
Research interests: Organizations, Social Psychology, Theory, Science and Technology, Qualitative Methods
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. He has studied a wide variety of empirical cases, ranging from boxing gyms to Artificial Intelligence labs, gay affirming churches to rural, working class towns, from the conceptual and cultural history of the Internet to hot-button political organizations like the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue. Steve's primary work develops an organizational and interpretive approach to how simulation techniques and technologies are imagined, transformed into legitimate scientific knowledge, and disseminated across complex organizational fields. Steve G. Hoffman does not normally refer to himself in the third person, but does take modest joy in gently poking fun at this this odd form of scholarly legitimation.
Recent Courses Taught:
Organizational Sociology (undergraduate)
Organizational Theory (graduate)
Representative publications:
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.
Prasad, M., A. Perrin, K. Bezila, S. Hoffman, K. Kindleberger, K. Manturuk, A. Powers, and A. Payton. Forthcoming [2009]. “The Undeserving Rich: Moral Values and the White Working Class.” Sociological Forum.24,2.
Hoffman, Steve G. 2007. “Simulation as a Social Process in Organizations.” Sociology Compass. 1, 2: 613-636.
Hoffman, Steve G. 2006. “How to Punch Someone and Stay Friends: An Inductive Theory of Simulation.” Sociological Theory. 24(2): 170-193.
Hoffman, Steve G. and Gary Alan Fine. 2005. “The Scholar’s Body: Mixing It Up With Loïc Wacquant.” Qualitative Sociology. 28(2): 151-157.
Current Research:
My current research involves three, loosely united streams:
1) Simulation techniques and technologies as an organizational form. I am especially interested in the increasing importance of simulation for scientific knowledge production, its role in organizational innovation and risk, and as a particular type of location for social interaction within dynamic social systems. In general, this stream is part of a more general interest in organizational situations in which people engage in activity that is not-quite real, although not-quite fake either. My previous case was on boxing training. Currently I am working on a book and several articles that theorize the dynamic interplay of ambiguity and precision in the development of simulation technologies at Artificial Intelligence laboratories.
2) The social psychology of political deliberation. This research stream involves issues of deliberative democracy, information processing, how false beliefs are maintained, and how people make voting decisions. So far, I have focused on rural, white, working-class Republicans. I am collaborating with Monica Prasad at Northwestern on a follow-up, longitudinal study of a small, rural, predominately white working class town heading into the 2008 Presidential Election.
3) Discrimination litigation as a dynamic system. This stream involves a collaborative effort with Bob Nelson and Laura Beth Nielsen at Northwestern University and the American Bar Foundation, and Ellen Berrey at SUNY Buffalo. I am interested in how plaintiffs, plaintiff lawyers, defendants, and defendant lawyers make sense of, and navigate, a highly complex litigation system, focusing for now on the vast majority of cases that end in settlement.
email: sgh [at] buffalo [dot] edu