Hawley, Amos

Amos Henry Hawley (1910–) is the founder of neo-orthodox human ecology and a prominent scholar in population analysis, urban sociology, and population policy. He is currently professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Kenan Professor at the University of North Carolina. He has served as president of the Population Association of America and of the American Sociological Association; as demographic adviser to the governments of the Philippines, the Netherlands Antilles, Thailand, and Malaysia; as adviser to the director of Selective Services during World War II and to the Michigan State Planning Commission. He has assisted the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Senate in population projects. He is a recipient of the Lynd Award from the Urban and Community Sociological Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA) and of the Award for Human Ecology Contributions from Cornell University. The Amos H. Hawley Distinguished Professorship at UNC is named in his honor. The author of 150 papers and books, his work redefines human ecological study as a general theory of social organization, which has become the primary theoretical perspective in contemporary human ecology.

Born in 1910 in St. Louis, Missouri, Amos Hawley received his AB degree from the University of Cincinnati in 1936. Here Hawley was exposed to sociology and human ecology by James A. Quinn who, like Hawley, would later figure prominently in the neo-orthodox movement in human ecology. Taken with the macrosocial approach aspects of society, Hawley pursued his graduate work at the University of Michigan under one of the best-known human ecologists of his day, Roderick D. McKenzie. In his first year, Hawley worked closely with McKenzie on a comprehensive treatise on human ecology. This collaborative [Page 347]manuscript was lost in a fire, and McKenzie, then suffering from a debilitating illness, turned over restoration of the work to Hawley.