| Abstract: The behavior analytic emphasis on environmental determinism makes the approach a natural bedfellow of progressive social action, as the source of social and cultural problems are located in the environment rather than in people. Eliminating these problems requires modification of the controlling external environment rather than modification of presumably defective people. Progressive change may therefore include counter-control skill training of people to alter the problematic environment. The panelists will present several brief prompts for discussion, including (a) the historical linkage between behavior analysis and progressive social action, beginning with Watson and then Skinner, the emergence of behavior modification in the 1960s, and up through the present, (b) current and immediately realistic opportunities for further behavioral systems analytic work in the areas of structural and collective violence, sustainability, environmental justice, and grassroots activism in the context of economic systems that favor large corporations, and (c) possible strategies for incorporating progressive social action into a behavior analytic career. |