This is a comprehensive presentation on Amos Hawley's Ecological theory which has been prepared as part of my M.phil course work.

1. Presented by,
Sameena M.S
UGC Junior Research Fellow,
Dept. of Sociology
Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit,
Kalady, Kerala, India

2.  Amos Henry Hawley (1910-2009)
 American Sociologist
 Educated from the University of Cincinnati &
Michigan
 Major figure in Human Ecology
 Focus on human interaction with their changing
environment along with population growth

3.  Influenced by McKenzie who was mentored by Park &
Burgess
 Influence of Chicago school of thought in early works
 Focus on spatial distributions in urban environment
 Bio-ecologists- variation, adaptation & selection
 Focus shifted to change, structure & functioning of the
social system

4.  “The study of interrelationship between individuals,
social groups, and their social environments” ( Oxford
Dictionary of Sociology)
 Plant and animal ecology- emphasis on physical
environment
Animal
Plant Human

5.  Human Ecology: A Theory of Community Structure
(1950)
 Key idea: Adaptation to social & physical environment
was a collective phenomenon for humans accomplished
through social organization
 Organization can grow and evolve
 Felt a need for a unified theory

6.  Most important work
 Took the perspective of collective life from plant and
animal ecology- The competitive and evolutionary
mechanisms determining the distribution of species in
physical environment
 Macro sociological perspective, focus on change in
social, physical and technological environment
 3 General propositions/ postulates
1. Adaptation
2. Growth
3. Evolution

7.  1. “Adaptation occurs through the formation of
interdependencies among the units in population”
 2. “The system development continues until it reaches
the upper limit that can be sustained by the
environment, given a certain technology for
communication and transportation”
 3. “When systems acquire new information or
technology, the processes in the first 2 propositions is
resumed until a new equilibrium is reached”

8.  Basic processes of ecology: Collective organizing
expansive quality of social groups in a restricted but
ever changing environment
 The crowding of organisms subsisting upon limited
resources results in competition
 Change: an irreversible shift in the pattern of
relationships among the units in a population

9.  Later focus shifted from competition to adaptation
 Environmental variations over time
technology
 Role of technology in limiting internal adaptation to an
environment, expand the type of collective
organization & allow people to grow

10.  Ignored human agency
 Emphasis on large scale long-term changes in
response to impersonal structural forces

11.  First Human ecologist emphasizing the importance of
culture in shaping the human ecological system
 Explained everything in terms of population,
organization and environment
 Hawley, a dedicated macro sociologist!!!