Andrew Lakoff

• NIH Postdoctoral Fellow in Medical Anthropology, Harvard University, 2000-2002

Tenure Track Appointments

• Professor of Sociology and Communication, University of Southern California, 2017 –
• Associate Professor of Anthropology, Sociology and Communication, University of Southern California, 2009 –
• Associate Professor of Sociology and Science Studies, University of California, San Diego, 2006 – 2009
• Assistant Professor of Sociology and Science Studies, University of California, San Diego, 2002 – 2006

Visiting and Temporary Appointments

• Visiting Associate Professor, Harvard University, 2008-2009

Summary Statement of Research Interests

Andrew Lakoff holds a joint appointment in the Departments of Sociology and Communication. He was trained as an anthropologist of science and medicine, and has conducted research in Argentina, France and the United States. His areas of interest include globalization processes, the history of the human sciences, contemporary social theory, and risk society.

Lakoff’s first book, Pharmaceutical Reason: Knowledge and Value in Global Psychiatry (Cambridge, 2005), examines the role of the global circulation of pharmaceuticals in the spread of biological models of human behavior. He has also co-edited a book entitled Global Pharmaceuticals: Ethics, Markets, Practice (Duke, 2006), and has published articles on visual technology and the behavioral sciences, on the history of attention deficit disorder, on antidepressants and the placebo effect, and on forms of expertise in global health. Lakoff’s current research concerns the recent articulation of expertise in public health and security in a global context, and his recent book publications include the co-edited volume, Biosecurity Interventions: Global Health and Security in Question (Columbia University Press, 2008), and the edited volume Disaster and the Politics of Intervention (Columbia University Press, 2010). His most recent book is Unprepared: Global Health in a Time of Emergency (University of California Press, 2017).

Lakoff’s next book, co-authored with Stephen J. Collier, is entitled The Government of Emergency: Vital Systems Security and the Birth of American Biopolitics, and is under contract with Princeton University Press.

Research Keywords

Latin America, United States, pharmaceuticals, biosecurity, globalization, biomedicine, biosecurity

Contracts and Grants Awarded

• Technocratic Expertise and the Government of Catastrophic Risk in the United States, 1950 – 2010, (NSF), Andrew Lakoff $318,229, 2010-2013
• International Colloquium: Ecological Risk and the Role of Sentinels, (Borchard Foundation), Andrew Lakoff $35,000, 2011-2012
• The Global Biopolitics of Security, (National Science Foundation), Paul Rabinow $288,000, 2005-2007

USC Funding

• College 2020. Research Cluster in Science, Technology and Society $251,000, 2009-2013

Book

• Lakoff, A. (2017). Unprepared: Global Health in a Time of Emergency. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Lakoff, Andrew (Ed.). (2010). Disaster and the Politics of Intervention. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Lakoff, Andrew; Collier, Stephen J. (Ed.). (2008). Biosecurity Interventions: Global Health and Security in Question. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Petryna, Adriana; Lakoff, Andrew; Kleinman, Arthur (Ed.). (2006). Global Pharmaceuticals: Ethics, Markets, Practices. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
• Lakoff, A. (2005). Pharmaceutical Reason: Knowledge and Value in Global Psychiatry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Book Chapter

• Lakoff, A. (2015). Global Health Security and the Pathogenic Imaginary. Dreamscapes of Modernity Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Mallard, G., Lakoff, A. (2011). How Claims to Know the Future Are Used to Understand the Present: Techniques of Prospection in the Field of National Security. Social Knowledge in the Making Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Lakoff, A., Collier, S. J. (2011). Infrastructure and Event: The Political Technology of Preparedness. Political Matter University of Minnesota Press.
• Mallard, G., Lakoff, A. (2010). How Claims to Know the Future Are Used to Understand the Present: Techniques of Prospection in the Field of National Security. Social Knowledge in the Making University of Chicago Press.
• Collier, S. J., Lakoff, A. (2008). The Vulnerability of Vital Systems: How Critical Infrastructure Became a Security Problem. IN: The Politics of Securing the Homeland: Critical Infrastructure, Risk and Securitization. New York: Routledge.
• Lakoff, A. (2007). The Right Patients for the Drug: Pharmaceutical Circuits and the Codification of Illness. IN: Handbook of Science and Technology Studies. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Lakoff, A. (2005). The Private Life of Numbers: Database firms and the Government of Expertise in Argentina. IN: Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics and Ethics as Anthropological Problems. Oxford and Boston: Blackwell.

Book Review

• Lakoff, A. (2012). Autism and its Milieu. BioSocieties.

Essay

• Lakoff, A. (2015). “Vaccine Politics and the Management of Public Reason. Public Culture.
• Lakoff, A. (2012). The Risks of Preparedness: Mutant Bird Flu. pp. 457-454. Public Culture.

Journal Article

• Lakoff, A. (2016). The Indicator Species: Tracking Ecosystem Collapse in Arid California. Public Culture. Vol. 28 (2), pp. 237 – 259.
• Lakoff, A. (2016). A Fragile Assemblage: Mutant Bird Flu and the Ends of Preparedness. Social Studies of Science.
• Collier, S. J., Lakoff, A. (2015). “Vital Systems Security: Reflexive Biopolitics and the Government of Emergency”. Theory, Culture and Society. Vol. 32 (2)
• Lakoff, A. (2015). Real Time Biopolitics: The Actuary and the Sentinel in Global Public Health. Economy and Society. Vol. 44 (1), pp. 40 – 59.
• Lakoff, A. (2010). Two Regimes of Global Health. Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development. Vol. 1 (1), pp. 59-79.
• Lakoff, A., Klinenberg, E. (2010). Of Risk and Pork: Urban Security and the Politics of Calculation. Theory and Society. Vol. 39, pp. 503-525.
• Lakoff, A. (2008). The Generic Biothreat, or, How We Became Unprepared. Cultural Anthropology. Vol. 23 (3)
• Collier, S. J., Lakoff, A. (2008). Distributed Preparedness: The Spatial Logic of Domestic Security in the United States. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. Vol. 26 (1)
• Lakoff, A. (2007). Preparing for the Next Emergency. Public Culture. Vol. 19 (2)
• Lakoff, A. (2007). The Right Patients for the Drug: Managing the Placebo Effect in Antidepressant Trials. BioSocieties. Vol. 2 (1)
• Lakoff, A. (2005). The Simulation of Madness: Buenos Aires, 1903. Critical Inquiry. Vol. 31 (4)
• Lakoff, A. (2005). Diagnostic Liquidity: Mental Illness and the Global Trade in DNA. Theory and Society. Vol. 34 (1)
• Collier, S. J., Lakoff, A., Rabinow, P. (2004). Biosecurity: Proposal for an Anthropology of the Contemporary. Anthropology Today. Vol. 20 (5)
• Lakoff, A., Collier, S. J. (2004). Ethics and the Anthropology of Modern Reason. Anthropological Theory. Vol. 4 (4)
• Lakoff, A. (2004). The Anxieties of Globalization: Antidepressant Sales and Economic Crisis in Argentina. Social Studies of Science. Vol. 34 (2)
• Lakoff, A. (2003). The Lacan Ward: Pharmacology and Subjectivity in Buenos Aires. Social Analysis. Vol. 47 (2)
• Lakoff, A. (2000). Adaptive Will: The Evolution of Attention Deficit Disorder. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences. Vol. 36 (2)
• Lakoff, A. (1996). Freezing Time: Margaret Mead’s Diagnostic Photography. Visual Anthropology. Vol. 12 (1)

• Residency at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, 2016-2017
• Fellow, International Center for Advanced Studies, New York University, 2006-2007