Mary C. Waters
Born1957 Edit this on Wikidata
Alma mater
OccupationSociologist, academic, university teacher Edit this on Wikidata
Employer
Awards

Mary C. Waters (born c. 1957) is an American sociologist, demographer and author. She is the John L. Loeb Professor of Sociology and the PVK Professor of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.[1][2] Much of her work has focused on immigrants, the meaning of racial and ethnic identity, and how immigrants integrate into a new society.[3][4] Waters chaired the 2015 National Research Council Panel on The Integration of Immigrants into American Society.[5]

Her books have received multiple awards. Waters has been elected to the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.[1] As of August 2023, Waters became a co-editor of the Annual Review of Sociology.[6]

Personal

Waters grew up in Brooklyn, New York where she attended Our Lady Help of Christians elementary school and Saint Saviour High School. She now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[3]

Career

Waters earned her B.A. in Philosophy from Johns Hopkins University in 1978. She went on to earn her first M.A. in Demography in 1981 and her second M.A. in 1983 from the University of California at Berkeley, along with her PhD in Sociology in 1986.[3]

Waters has taught at Harvard University since 1986 and has served on multiple boards and committees at Harvard, including chairing the Sociology Department.[3] She has been named the M.E. Zukerman Professor of Sociology,[7] the John L. Loeb Professor of Sociology and (as of 2018) the PVK Professor of Arts and Sciences.[8][5][1]

Waters specializes in the study of immigration, identity formation and inter-group relations, with an emphasis on ethnic and racial identity among the children of immigrants.[9][10] She examines the formation and measurement of race and identity[11] and has testified before Congress and worked with the United States census on its framing of measures of racial and ethnic identity.[3] She also studies the social determinants of health and long term resilience and recovery from disasters.[12] She is the principal investigator in a longitudinal study of the effects of Hurricane Katrina on African-American single mothers from New Orleans.[8][13][14]

Waters has written or edited at least 13 books,[5] and published numerous papers.[15] She is noted for her concept of ethnic option, according to which the children and descendants of immigrants have the option of choosing whether or not to identify with the ethnicity of their ancestors.[16][17][18] Waters notes, however, that there are four specific factors which influence that choice: “knowledge about ancestors, surname, looks, and the relative rankings of the groups.”[19] The term first appeared in her book Ethnic Options, Choosing Identities in America (1990).[19][20]

Her book Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Ideas and American Realities (1999) won five scholarly awards.[3] Her underlying research for the book has been described as a "methodological tour de force" presenting multiple perspectives on race, class, ethnicity and generations.[21] Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age (2008) has also won multiple awards.[22] It has been described as "a deeply learned, richly empirical, and elegantly written tour de force" that appreciates the complexity of immigrant lives.[23] The authors suggested that second generation immigrants were able to choose helpful aspects from both their parents' culture and the culture of their native-born peers, enabling them to become more successful. The work was considered "methodologically innovative" for the techniques it used to randomly select a sample of people to study, and for its matching of similar immigrant and non-immigrant control groups (e.g. West Indian immigrants and African-Americans.)[24]

Waters chaired the 2015 NRC Panel on The Integration of Immigrants into American Society and co-edited the resulting 2016 book, The Integration of Immigrants into American Society.[5][2] Its research counters a number of myths about the impact of immigration. Results showed that cities with large immigrant populations actually had lower crime rates, not higher ones. The research showed that immigration positively effected long-term economic growth, housing markets and labor markets, without negatively impacting native-born workers. The work also showed that immigrants become more like native-born Americans through successive generations, a phenomenon that includes both benefits such as higher educational level and deficits such as poorer health.[25][26][27]

Waters serves on the governing council of the National Academy of Sciences, and was appointed in 2023 to a committee that advises the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education (DBASSE) at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.[2] As of August 2023, Waters became a co-editor of the Annual Review of Sociology.[6]

Awards and honors

Works

Books

Chapters in books

  • Waters, Mary C.; Devine, Fiona (2004), "Introduction", in Waters, Mary C.; Devine, Fiona (eds.), Social inequalities in comparative perspective, Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 1–19, ISBN 9780631226857.
  • Waters, Mary C. (2004), "Race, ethnicity, and immigration in the United States", in Waters, Mary C.; Devine, Fiona (eds.), Social inequalities in comparative perspective, Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 20–38, ISBN 9780631226857.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Mary C. Waters". Department of Sociology, Harvard University. Retrieved 5 December 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 "DBASSE Advisory Committee Gets Three New Members". Social Science Space. May 5, 2023.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Mary C. Waters John L. Loeb Professor of Sociology PVK Professor of Arts and Sciences". Harvard University. Retrieved 5 December 2023.
  4. ↑ Foner, Nancy; Deaux, Kay; Donato, Katharine M. (2018). "Introduction: Immigration and Changing Identities". RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences. 4 (5): 1–25. ISSN 2377-8261. Retrieved 7 December 2023.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 "Mary Waters Greystone Partners". Greystone Partners, LLC. Retrieved 5 December 2023.
  6. 1 2 "Annual Review of Sociology, Current Editorial Committee". Annual Reviews Directory. Retrieved 4 December 2023.
  7. 1 2 "Mary C. Waters". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 5 December 2023. Retrieved 5 December 2023.
  8. 1 2 D'Onofrio, Daniel (3 April 2018). "4 Harvard scholars win Arts and Sciences Professorships". Harvard Gazette. Retrieved 5 December 2023.
  9. ↑ Powell, Alvin (21 September 2015). "Measuring assimilation". Harvard Gazette. Retrieved 5 December 2023.
  10. ↑ Guo, Jeff (25 November 2021). "The biggest ideas underpinning the anti-immigration movement aren't backed up by data". Washington Post. Retrieved 5 December 2023.
  11. ↑ Navarro, Mireya (Jan 13, 2012). "For Many Latinos, Racial Identity Is More Culture Than Color". Retrieved 5 December 2023.
  12. ↑ Hayden-Dilbert, Cezanne (9 April 2023). "Higher Ed Pathways to Immigration: Why it Matters Event". Presidents' Alliance.
  13. 1 2 "Mary C. Waters". National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 5 December 2023.
  14. ↑ "Mary C. Waters Ph.D." Robert Wood Johnson Foundation - Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research.
  15. ↑ "Publications | Mary C. Waters". Harvard University.
  16. ↑ Omi, Michael (June 1997). "Racial Identity and the State: The Dilemmas of ClassificationRacial Identity and the State: The Dilemmas of Classification". Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality. 15 (1): 7–23. Retrieved 5 December 2023.
  17. ↑ Kleg, Milton (1 January 1993). Hate Prejudice and Racism. SUNY Press. pp. 43–44. ISBN 978-0-7914-1535-1.
  18. ↑ Hickman, Mary J. (2005). "Migration and diaspora". In Cleary, Joe; Connolly, Claire (eds.). The Cambridge companion to modern Irish culture. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 117–136.
  19. 1 2 Waters, Mary C. (1990). Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. p. 57. ISBN 0520070836.
  20. ↑ Rost-Banik, Colleen; Chhuon, Vichet (7 December 2015). "Ethnic Options". The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism (1 ed.). Wiley. ISBN 978-1-4051-8978-1.
  21. 1 2 Browne, Katherine E. (2001). "Review of Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities". NWIG: New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids. 75 (3/4): 334–336. ISSN 1382-2373. Retrieved 6 December 2023.
  22. ↑ "Inheriting the City". The Russell Sage Foundation. Retrieved 7 December 2023.
  23. 1 2 Hirschman, Charles (2008). "Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age". The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 620: 307–310. ISSN 0002-7162. Retrieved 7 December 2023.
  24. ↑ Doran, Joanna (1 March 2010). "Review of Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age. Philip Kasinitz, John H. Mollenkopf, Mary C. Waters and Jennifer Holdaway. Reviewed by Joanna Doran". The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare. 37 (1). doi:10.15453/0191-5096.3499. Retrieved 7 December 2023.
  25. 1 2 "Studies of Immigration Chaired by RSF Authors Debunk Longstanding Myths". he Russell Sage Foundation. October 19, 2016. Retrieved 7 December 2023.
  26. ↑ Strom, Adam (11 December 2017). "Scholar Spotlight: What Everyone Should Know about the Integration of Immigrants in the U.S." Re-imagining Migration. Retrieved 5 December 2023.
  27. ↑ Edsall, Thomas B. (Nov 3, 2021). "The 'Third Rail of American Politics' Is Still Electrifying". The New York Times. Retrieved 5 December 2023.
  28. ↑ "Mary C. Waters". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation... Retrieved 5 December 2023.
  29. ↑ "Mary Waters". GBH. Retrieved 7 December 2023.
  30. ↑ "Sociologists Named American Academy of Arts & Sciences Fellows" (PDF). Footnotes. 34 (7): 4. 2006.
  31. ↑ "KEYNOTE ADRESS Professor Mary C. Waters" (PDF). Sociology Research Institute 24th Annual Research Celebration! Friday, April 25 th , 2014 Hubert H. Humphrey Center.
  32. ↑ "Sociology of Population Award Recipient History". American Sociological Association.
  33. 1 2 "International Migration Award Recipient History". American Sociological Association.
  34. ↑ "2020 Mirra Komarovsky Book Award presented to Anthony Abraham Jack". Department of Sociology, Harvard University.
  35. ↑ "Distinguished Scholarly Book Award". American Sociological Association.
  36. ↑ Stevenson, Marshall F. (1994). ""Ethnic Options, Choosing Identities in America", by Mary C. Waters (Book Review)". Journal of American Ethnic History. 13 (4): 88-.
  37. ↑ Logan, John R. (2003). "Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities. By Mary C. Waters. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999. Pp. xviii+413. $36.95 (cloth); $18.95 (paper)". American Journal of Sociology. 108 (6): 1373–1374. Retrieved 6 December 2023.
  38. ↑ Zhou, M. (1 June 2001). "Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities. By Mary C. Waters. Harvard University Press, 1999. 413 pp. Cloth, $35.00". Social Forces. 79 (4): 1550–1552. doi:10.1353/sof.2001.0058.
  39. ↑ Nee, Victor (November 2009). "Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age . By Philip Kasinitz, John H. Mollenkopf, Mary C. Waters, and Jennifer Holdaway. New York and Cambridge: Russell Sage Foundation and Harvard University Press, 2008. Pp. x+420. $45.00". American Journal of Sociology. 115 (3): 955–957. doi:10.1086/651351. ISSN 0002-9602. Retrieved 7 December 2023.
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