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| Infrastructural Determinism and the Role of Variability in Behavior Across Levels |
| Sunday, May 25, 2025 |
| 9:00 AM–9:50 AM |
| Convention Center, Street Level, 154 AB |
| Area: PCH |
| Instruction Level: Intermediate |
| Chair: Carmen R. Britton (The Arc of Central Alabama) |
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| Radical Behaviorists in Search for the Subaltern: Claiming Power in Infrastructure |
| Domain: Theory |
| CARMEN R. BRITTON (The Arc of Central Alabama) |
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| Abstract: This paper revisits Marvin Harris’ 1986 call for behavior analysts to examine the primacy of infrastructural determinism. Behavior analysts must study cultural phenomena and “find ways to contribute to the modification of the existing systems of political-economic control and its infrastructural base” (Harris, 1986 in Kangas, 2007, p. 47). Infrastructure means “the etic behavioral modes of production and reproduction as constituted by a conjunction of demographic, economic, technological, and environmental variables” (Harris, 1999, p. 141). An acknowledgement of infrastructure is necessary so the resistance of those cut off from lines of social mobility, the subaltern, can be recognized (Spivak, 2004). Our field should prioritize infrastructural determinism as a critical area of study and focus our efforts on analyzing systems of political-economic control and their maintaining contingencies. The United States’ culture of firearm deaths, the leading cause of death for children (Villarreal et al., 2024), will serve as a case study to operationalize a framework for applying the concepts outlined. Continued efforts to understand pressing sociocultural issues will expand the application and utility of our field, promote interdisciplinary progress, and provide common ground with other disciplines and epistemologies that we have historically failed to engage. |
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| How Contingencies of Selection Produce Variation in Phylogeny, Ontogeny and Sociogeny |
| Domain: Theory |
| WILLIAM DAVID STAHLMAN (University of Mary Washington), A. Charles Catania (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) |
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| Abstract: You can’t have selection without variations within the populations upon which it operates. To assume that something generates the variations (e.g., mutations) focuses on just one direction. What if selection in turn can operate on variation itself? If a highly variable population is more likely to survive than a stereotyped one, will the variability itself somehow be passed on? At the levels of phylogenic (Darwinian), ontogenic (operant) and sociogenic (cultural) selection, we provide examples in which contingencies of selection have favored variable over stereotyped populations. For example, across a range of species, parents must distinguish each other and their offspring from other individuals (e.g., Emperor penguins can locate their mates among thousands)—they can do so only if each individual has some unique features (like humans, each penguin has its own distinctive voice). Analogous contingencies operate not only in such phylogenic examples but also, as we will show, in ontogeny (e.g., the ubiquity of operant shaping) and in sociogeny (e.g., the advantages of cultural diversity). |
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