Cultural design in Walden Two: a critical analysis of B. F. Skinner's utopian thinking

• Grant number: 17/09680-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: August 01, 2017
• End date: October 31, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Experimental Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Júlio César Coelho de Rose
• Grantee: Cesar Antonio Alves da Rocha
• Supervisor: John Eric Rayner Staddon
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Duke University, United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 14/02981-1 - Behavior analysis and cultural design: utopia or dystopia?, BP.DR

Abstract

In the text that follows there is an overview on a theoretical research project and a brief description of activities intended to be executed during an exchange period at Duke University, as a relevant complement to the doctoral research already in progress. In this broader research, titled "Behavior analysis and cultural design: utopia or dystopia?", the main subject matter is B. F. Skinner's idea about the design of cultures and its fallout. At the present time, the research has focused on Skinner's view on science, technology and the control of human behavior, besides his theoretical description of what cultural design is and what it is not, along with the virtues and challenges surrounding this proposal. During the internship abroad, the focus will be on the work that initially presented Skinner's view of an ideal society, and that exemplified some of his ideas on cultural design, that is, the novel Walden Two. Many targeted the book as controversial: although it was often mentioned as a utopia, part of literary criticism viewed it as a dystopia. Considering this, the novel deserves to be more deeply analyzed in order to clarify how it could provide insights on the Skinnerian proposal named cultural design, and how such a proposal could encompass utopian or dystopian traits. Skinner's text will be submitted to a conceptual analysis, which will seek to understand, from the narrative present in the novel, aspects involved in the enterprise of deliberate control of social behavior and cultural design. In addition, it is intended to evaluate how the deliberate exercise of social control would approach or distance itself from tendencies typically seen as utopian or dystopian.