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Emilio Moran Winner of the
2002 Robert McC. Netting Award It is with great pleasure and
some trepidation that I present Dr. Emilio Moran as the 2002 recipient of the
Robert McCorkle Netting Award from the Cultural Ecology Specialty Group of
the Association of American Geographers. Pleasure, because in the last
few months I have had the opportunity to work directly with Dr. Moran at the Emilio F. Moran is the James
H. Rudy Professor of Anthropology, Director of the After Emilio completed his
history Master’s degree he was advised that that field did not offer
opportunities available in other disciplines at the time. He developed
an interest in Development Economics and wanted to pursue this line of
study. Investigating this field at the University of North Carolina,
Moran quickly discovered that J.Arthur Lewis had
published the seminal work on the subject only the year before and that it
would be a long time before the field developed into the vibrant line of
inquiry it is today. He knew that he was interested in the processes of
change that he was witnessing while studying Emilio’s exposure to geography
began early by taking a course with Dr. Joshua Dickinson and learning about
tropical swidden agriculture. To further
understand these systems he was encouraged to dig into soil science and did
so at Emilio claims that “from the
very beginning I felt very close to geography. One of my best friends
was Nigel Smith, now Chair of Geography at As a graduate student in
economic anthropology and cultural ecology, Emilio realized that no
authoritative text existed about adaptation to (and of) the natural
environment existed. To address this lacuna, he outlined his plans for
just such a text but was encouraged to shelve the project until completing
his dissertation research. He picked up the project again and wrote Human
Adaptability, published in 1979, and recently released again in a 2nd
edition (2000). In Human Adaptability Moran addresses the
delicate questions of central concern to cultural ecologists. He
claims, “You don’t adapt to a region…you adapt to very specific resources
within that region.” At a meeting years
later, Karl Butzer gave him a high compliment when
he asked Emilio “how does an anthropologist ever write Human Adaptability
and avoid the strange debates that you people get into?” Emilio's
response was “I learned my cultural ecology from reading Carl Sauer and
Julian Steward, my ecology from H.T. Odum and A.
Lugo, and from long thoughtful discussions with Chuck Wagley,
not in a cultural ecology class, per se.... I have always tried to avoid
unproductive debates. One of the difficulties in human-environment
studies is that we keep renaming it so that they [new researchers] don’t
recognize themselves for what they are -- environmental social
scientists.” Moran is currently under contract to produce a book
entitled Environmental Social Science, which will be a synthesis of
the theories and methods from the social sciences that best speak to
environmental issues today. His advice to young scholars
is straightforward. "Think of interesting combinations of skills that
make you unique and interesting, and keep you going." He further
urges scholars to look beyond the boundaries of their discipline. “More and
more interesting work is done in the space between the disciplines…and
teamwork is key” to successfully mounting studies at the point of
human-environment interaction. He has trained graduate students both in
Geography and Anthropology who bring innovative approaches and unique skill
sets to problem solving. He has mentored these and other students to follow
him in applying multiple methods in environmental social science, and holds
his students’ abilities and contributions in high esteem. He takes
particular pride in supervising and turning out ten Brazilian PhD students
over the last decade, in anthropology and environmental science. He made a
commitment in 1985 when the military dictatorship ended in Moran himself develops
expertise as new technologies and techniques become available. He was
one of the first social scientists to employ remote sensing. In 1987 he
attended a 1987 NSF-sponsored workshop on the applications of remote sensing
to ecological anthropology. Moran and colleagues immediately saw
interesting possibilities for using remote sensing. “I was very excited
because we all came up with questions that we had always wanted to address
but had never been able to—because there was no technical way to do it” he
says. Two years later, after completing Fulbright and Guggenheim
fellowships, Moran obtained NSF funding to learn and then use the new
technology to challenge conventional thinking about the dynamics of Amazon
deforestation. “There was tremendous pressure on Dr. Moran has helped develop
the integration of remote sensing, GIS, and on the ground social
research. To that end he built the Moran’s publishing and
dissemination career is impressive. In addition to serving on the
editorial boards of at least ten journals, he continues to publish books,
articles, research notes, and monographs on his own. Books of note are Human
Adaptability: An Introduction to Ecological Anthropology (2000), Through
Amazonian Eyes: The Human Ecology of Amazonian Populations (1993), Developing
the Amazon (1981), and others. As well, Moran has edited important
works such as People and Pixels: Linking Remote Sensing and Social Science
(1998); Transforming Societies, Transforming Anthropology (1996); The
Comparative Analysis of Human Societies: Toward Common Standards for Data
Collection and Reporting (1995); The Ecosystem Approach in
Anthropology: From Concept to Practice (1990); and The Dilemma of
Amazonian Development (1983) among others. In terms of book
chapters and journal articles, Moran has at least ten in press currently and
nearly countless others already published (see below). These articles
and chapters address key concerns in the study of human-environment
relationships with increasing importance being placed on the integration of
remote sensing with more traditional cultural ecological approaches. In
addition, Moran can make a claim few of us can. He has advised two film
scripts while at In his dedication to continued
field study, Moran has been highly successful at attaining grants from a wide
array of agencies and organizations. He currently oversees grants from
the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Child Health and
Development, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. These, and former
grants form other bodies, are written and won so that he may continue to
pursue those studies that have been a passion of his since he began doctoral
work in the late 1960s. In addition, Moran is a fellow of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science. I am glad that Emilio is not a
smallholding farmer. If he were I would have to study him and be forced to
fit his behavior to the theories we currently use. Indulge this exercise for
a moment. If we apply Chayanov to Emilio’s career,
we are befuddled. Clearly there is no drudgery avoidance in his
behavior. His production began early in the demographic cycle, indeed before
he finished his PhD at the Nor does Emilio fit the
smallholder model espoused by this Award’s namesake, Bob Netting. While
his relation with this environment—academia—has been intensive to say the
least, Moran has not let the boundaries of his training, discipline, or
University constrain him. In fact one of the most notable aspects of
his career is the way that Dr. Moran has expanded his production and
inquiries into new geographical and intellectual regions. To this end
Emilio works with geographers, political scientists, ecologists, remote
sensing experts, and others in collaborative endeavors that have resulted in
the creation of two renowned centers, CIPEC and ACT. Furthermore, his
research fields have spanned the wet and dry tropics in the Finally if we adopt a
classical economics stance we are once again frustrated. Dr. Moran
behaves in the market not solely for himself but for the advancement of
science and the benefit of colleagues, students, and the people whose
interactions with the physical environment he tries to understand.
Attesting to this generosity is Emilio’s impressive record of service within I have tried to force Emilio
into a theoretical niche here and failed. But, my own shortcomings in
theory creation do not diminish the lifetime of work that he has successfully
completed at the intersection of human-environment interactions.
Because of his ability to speak across disciplines and for his past, present,
and future work, the Cultural Ecology Specialty Group of the Association of
American Geographers awards Dr. Emilio F. Moran the 2002, Robert McC. Netting
Award. - Eric Keys (ASU Geography),
2002. Author’s
note:
The author would like to thank the people who helped fill out this biopic of
Emilio Moran. Emilio himself shared time to discuss his career and his
views on environmental social science. The author would especially like
to thank Vonnie Peischl
and Dr. Dennis Conway, both of |
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Page last updated October
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