John Logan
Professor of Sociology:
Sociology
Phone: +1 401 863 2267
John_Logan@brown.edu
Dr. Logan is PI for US2010, a project supported by Russell Sage Foundation to analyze trends in American society that are revealed by the most recent data sources, including Census 2010. He is continuing research on the impact of hurricanes in the Gulf Coast. He has also undertaken studies of neighborhood change and individual mobility in U.S. cities in the period 1880-1920, and today. Since the early 1990s, Dr. Logan has studied social change in China, especially impacts of market transition.
Biography
Dr. Logan completed his PhD in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1974. Before coming to Brown he was Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Administration at the University at Albany, SUNY; Director of the Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research; and Director of the Urban China Research Network. Since 2005 he has served at Brown as Director of the research initiative on Spatial Structures in the Social Sciences. Dr. Logan is co-author, along with Harvey Molotch, of Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place. His most recent edited book, Urban China in Transition, was published by Blackwell in 2007.
Interests
Following are the descriptions of several new and continuing research projects that illustrate Dr. Logan's activities:
1. Katrina and the Built Environment: Spatial and Social Impacts
This project studies the social vulnerability of coastal communities by focusing on places, including urban neighborhoods and rural counties, identifying whose communities were most affected, which will be rebuilt and how they will be different from before, and which segments of the population will be permanently displaced. Its premise is that the impacts of environmental disasters depend not only on their location, return interval, and intensity, but also on the spatial distribution and mobility of distinct population groups. Further, the course of post-disaster adjustment – taking into account new configurations of what are considered safe or desirable areas, choices about public infrastructure investments, locational decisions made by past and potential new residents – reveals the social, economic, and political processes that create and recreate the built environment. We approach this from the perspective that disasters, at least in the distribution of their consequences, are man-made (Mileti 1999, Moore et al 2004).
The project will study the impacts of Hurricane Katrina, along with the recovery and reconstruction process as it unfolds. It will integrate remotely sensed ecological data with environmental hazard information, as well as demographic and socioeconomic data, to understand the social and ecological vulnerabilities of impacted communities. The opportunity for this research is time-dependent. For example, much privately-held remotely-sensed data is temporarily in the public domain, and it is important to work with it immediately. Information on the decision making process for rebuilding needs to be gathered by interviews and document collection as proposals appear and are acted upon in the next year. Validation of physical and ecological impacts needs to be done prior to their removal/alteration.
Intellectual merit: This project is unique in that it takes an eco-social approach to understanding the underlying drivers of population vulnerability to natural disasters. Indeed, although there has been much research on the ecological problems plaguing communities in the Gulf region and a large body of literature on the socioeconomic problems facing these diverse communities, there has been no attempt to integrate these two fields to make explicit the connections between environment and populations. The magnitude of the social and ecological calamity highlights the need for such an integrated eco-social approach. Consistent with the multidisciplinary emphasis of the Human and Social Dynamics program and the requirements of this approach, the core research team includes two sociologists (Logan and Brown), an environmental health scientist and epidemiologist (Morello-Frosch), a remote sensor (Mustard) and an ecosystem ecologist (Hamburg).
Broader impact: Katrina is the natural event with the most far-reaching impacts on the U.S. population in this generation. A scientific understanding of its effects will be valuable for public policymaking, both in the short term (investments in the region over the next several years) and in the long term (planning for the security of coastal zones). The project will also provide information that can be of use to future studies, including surveys of returning and relocated residents and risk assessments of other areas.
2. Immigrant Pathways to Political Incorporation
This project will address the question of why the political influence of immigrant groups in the U.S. remains considerably lower than that of non-Hispanic whites and African Americans. Specifically, it will study the processes of attainment of citizenship, voter registration, and voter turnout in the period 1996-2000. The first key question is this: What is the impact of nativity itself on the behaviors of immigrants, relative to and controlling for the effects of other factors that may influence them, including personal characteristics that also affect political participation among non-immigrants? The second key question is: How are individual behaviors affected by the ethnic and residential communities in which people are members? Political behavior is inherently collective, and decisions about whether or how quickly to gain citizenship, to register, and to vote are partly responsive to the political culture and political movements that swirl around them. This project therefore will focus on both individual and collective factors.
3. Immigration, Ethnicity and the Family: 1900-1920
This study examines patterns of intermarriage and of co-residence of parents and children in Chicago between 1900 and 1920. Intermarriage (across racial or ethnic lines) is the family behavior most closely charted by sociologists interested in ethnic assimilation. Living arrangements are an important indicator of family relationships, often thought to represent patterns of status and authority within the family or people's ability to rely on family support at various points in their lives. Like the decision to marry within one's group, the choice by parents and grown children to live together has sometimes been viewed by social scientists as an ethnic behavior. Hence both intermarriage and co-residence are relevant to processes of adaptation of ethnic and racial minorities to a new urban environment, one of the central phenomena of American cities at the turn of the century.
The study will explore the applicability of assimilation theory, which emphasizes the progressive cultural adaptation and incorporation of new groups into mainstream society over time, to family relations in this period. This issue is important in its own right. Results from this period are also relevant to the present time, providing a baseline against which contemporary processes of assimilation and family change can be compared.
Two kinds of analyses will be conducted. The first will use cross-sectional data from 1920, 1910, and 1900. Models of intermarriage will be estimated for all adults (with the category of "not married" treated as a distinct category). Models of household composition will be estimated for two partially overlapping sets of people: for ever-married persons aged 40 and over who may have grown children, and for persons aged 50 and under who may have living parents. As a test of assimilation theory, central questions are whether intermarriage and living arrangement are predicted by indicators of acculturation to American or Northern society (such as number of generations in the city and – for immigrants – age at immigration, years since immigration, language ability, and naturalization). The analysis will also incorporate information on people's ties to ethnic communities: residence in an ethnic neighborhood and work in an ethnic occupational niche or enclave economy. These variables will offer special insight into the impact of ethnic attachments on the family.
This study breaks new ground in its plan to analyze information on marriage and living arrangements over time with historical census data. Large samples of men and women aged 21 and above will be selected from the 1920 sample and traced back to the 1910 and 1900 census manuscripts, using standard genealogical methods. Although such tracing has been done before, this is the first study involving both men and women. Use of longitudinal data resolves critical methodological problems in the study of intermarriage. Panel data enable analysis of the effects of personal characteristics as measured prior to marriage on the odds of marriage and intermarriage by 1920, plus analysis of predictors of marital disruption and other outcomes by 1920 – including the potential effect of intermarriage itself. In cross-sectional studies, by contrast, a criticism of the use of census data is that any sample of current marriages may be biased by differential survival of in-married and intermarried cases. This is also the first historical panel study of change – rather than only cross-sectional variations – in living arrangements (investigating which young persons living with parents in 1900 had left the nest by 1920, and which parents and grown children living apart in 1900 were co-residing by 1920). This unique panel data file will be made available to other researchers for work on the family or the many other topics for which these data are appropriate.
4. Group Boundaries in New York and Chicago, 1900-1920
This project studies the residential and labor force positions of ethnic and racial groups in this country's two largest cities, New York and Chicago, at the turn of the century. This was the high point of European immigration into both cities, and it also included the first wave of large-scale migration of Southern blacks to the North. Discussions of this historical period, like those of the current time, attempt to assess the degree to which these groups experienced a process of assimilation into the mainstream or, alternatively, created or were confronted by enduring group boundaries. The principal questions involve the degree to which blacks and/or the main immigrant groups – Germans, Irish, Italians, Russians, and Poles – were segregated into specific neighborhoods and occupational niches, and the extent of their mobility over the life cycle and across generations.
To examine residential patterns, previously untapped data on the racial and ethnic composition of census tracts of both cities in 1920 will be used. Newly released census data files for individuals (the 1920 IPUMS files), which include people's address and census enumeration district, will be linked to these tract data, making possible the estimation of individual-level models of residential attainment.
To examine labor force patterns, the IPUMS files will be analyzed in terms of occupational clustering and segregation, levels of occupational standing, and the existence of ethnic economies based on concentrated group ownership and employment in certain sectors.
A unique feature of the study is the tracing of a random sample of 4,000 of the 1920 residents of each city to 1900 census records. This will allow evaluation of assimilation and group boundaries to be based on analyses of occupational and residential mobility over time for a representative sample of the population including both men and women.
Degrees
PhD, Sociology
Awards
Phi Beta Kappa (Berkeley, 1968)
Faculty Fellow (Columbia, 1968-1969)
NSF National Fellow (Berkeley, 1970-1972)
NEH Summer Fellow (1976)
Robert E. Park Award, ASA (l988)
Award for a Distinguished Scholarly Publication, ASA (1990)
Sorokin Lecturer, Pacific Sociological Association (1991)
University Award for Excellence in Research, SUNY (1991)
University Award for Excellence in Service, SUNY (1995)
Russell Sage Foundation, Visiting Scholar (1996-1997)
William J. Goode Award, ASA (1997)
Rockefeller Foundation Study Center (Bellagio), Visiting Scholar (1999)
SUNY Research Foundation Award for Excellence in Research and Scholarship (2003)
Robert and Helen Lynd Lifetime Achievement Award, ASA (2008)
Affiliations
Editorial boards: Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society (2006-present), City and Community (2004-present), Sociological Forum (1994-present), Journal of Urban Affairs (1989-1992, 1998-present), Contemporary Sociology (1997-1999, 2005-present).
American Sociological Association: Member since 1968. Vice President (2009-11). Appointed to Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award Committee, (1995-98, Chair 1995-97). Appointed to Spivack Program Advisory Committee (1997-2000). Elected to Committee on Publications (1998-2001).
American Sociological Association, Section on Community and Urban Sociology: Council member (1987-1996), Chair-elect (1990-92), Chair (1993-94).
International Sociological Association: Council member, Research Committee on Urban and Regional Development (1990-2002). President (1994-98).
Fellow, Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality at Stanford University (2006-present).
Immigration Program Advisory Committee, Russell Sage Foundation (2005-present).
NSF: Panel member, Sociology Program (1997-99). Panel member, Infrastructure Program, SBE (1999). Member, Committee of Visitors, Sociology Program (2000). Panel Member, Human and Social Dynamics (2005). Member, International Integrated Microdata Series Project Board (2004-2008).
NIH: Panel member, Social Sciences and Population Study Section (l988-l992).
China: Founder and Director, Urban China Research Network (1999-2004), Steering Committee member (2004-present). Board member, North American Chinese Sociologists Association (2000-2002). Advisory Board member, Urban China Research Centre, Cardiff University.
Advisory board member, Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science, University of California at Santa Barbara (2000-2004).
Predoctoral Awards Committee, International Migration Program of the Social Science Research Council (2001-2002).
Teaching
Dr. Logan teaches courses primarily in the areas of urban sociology, urban policy, and spatial analysis.
Funded Research
The Political Economy of Suburban Growth: Differentiation and Stratification of American Suburbs, 1950-1970 (with Mark Schneider). Project funded by the National Science Foundation, 1978-1980, and renewed, 1980-1982 ($250,000).
Population Composition and Change in American Suburbs (with Mark Schneider). Project funded by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 1983-1986 ($260,000).
Growth and Growth Politics in American Suburbs. Project funded by the National Science Foundation, 1986-1988 ($40,000).
Informal and Formal Supports in Aging (with Glenna Spitze). Project funded by the National Institute on Aging, 1988-1991 ($538,000).
Family Structure and Intergenerational Relations (with Glenna Spitze). Project funded by the National Institute on Aging, 1989-1992 ($305,000).
Suburbanization Patterns of Racial and Ethnic Groups (with Richard Alba). Project funded by the National Science Foundation, 1990-1992 ($80,000).
The Changing Character of Inner City Neighborhoods (with Richard Alba and Ray Bromley). Project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, 1990-1991 ($50,000).
Suburbanization Patterns of Racial and Ethnic Groups (with Richard Alba). Project funded by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 1990-1993 ($580,000).
Access to Housing and Community Resources in a Chinese City (with Yanjie Bian). Project funded by National Science Foundation, 1992-1995 ($154,000).
Residential Patterns of Minorities in the Metropolis (with Richard Alba). Project funded by National Science Foundation, 1995-1998 ($174,300).
Intergenerational Relations in Chinese Cities. Project funded by National Institutes of Health (NICHD and NIA), 1996-1999 ($350,000).
Generations of Immigrants and Minorities in New York. Project funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, 1998-1999 ($80,200).
Group Boundaries in New York and Chicago, 1900-1920. Project funded by the National Science Foundation, 1998-2002 ($318,000). Research Experience for Undergraduates Supplement ($15,000).
Urban China Research Network. Project funded by the Mellon Foundation, 2000-2005 ($920,000).
Immigration, Ethnicity, and the Family. Project funded by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000-2004 ($944,000).
Economic Revitalization through Technology and Education-Based Institutions. Project funded by U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2000-2001 ($85,000).
Diversity and Separation in American Neighborhoods. Project funded by the Ford Foundation, 2001-2004 ($300,000).
Urban Studies and Demography of China. Project funded by the Mellon Foundation, 2002-2005 ($100,000).
Group Boundaries in New York and Chicago: New Uses of the 1880 Census. Project funded by the National Science Foundation, 2002-2004 ($155,000).
Brown v. Board of Education at 50: Desegregation Orders and Public School Integration. Project funded by American Educational Research Association, 2004-2005 ($35,000).
Albany Population Center. R24 Population Center Grant funded by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2004-2007 ($1,081,000).
Immigrant Pathways to Political Incorporation. Project funded by Russell Sage Foundation, 2005-2006 ($150,000).
Katrina and the Built Environment: Spatial and Social Impacts. Project funded by National Science Foundation, 2005-2006 ($100,000).
Disaster, Resilience and the Built Environment on the Gulf Coast. Project funded by National Science Foundation, Human and Social Dynamics, 2006-2009 ($750,000).
Incorporating Immigrants and Minorities into Late 19th Century Cities. Project funded by National Science Foundation, Sociology Program, 2007-2008 ($190,000), and National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2007-2010 ($855,000 and supplement $82,000). Research Experience for Undergraduates Supplement ($6,000).
US 2010: America after the First Decade of the New Century. Project funded by Russell Sage Foundation and Brown University, 2009-2013 ($1,602,000).
Population Vulnerability and Resilience to Hurricanes on the Gulf Coast. Project funded by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development 2011-2012 ($429,000).
