Editorial: Cultural Analysis and Social Change in Medellín

Abstract

Introduces the Fall 2010 issue of The Behavior Analyst. This issue begins with an extensive special section entitled “The Human Response to Climate Change: Ideas From Behavior Analysis.” Each of the articles represents efforts to support human betterment and environmental action. Still, we need many more hands-on efforts to use principles of cultural analysis to support social change. I recently had the opportunity to see the beginnings of such work in what might appear to be an unlikely venue, and I want to share some observations about that project here. On a recent visit to Medellín, we had the opportunity to spend time with rank and file community police, with youth police cadets often drawn from the most disadvantaged neighborhoods, with gang members interested in leaving that life, with neighborhood leaders, and with citizens. In one area we visited, the homicide rate was reported to have dropped by half in recent months. Experienced police officers patrolling the streets on foot emphasized that with new communitarian policing practices, police and community had again become “one family.” My experience in my four visits to South America has been one of broad openness, even eagerness, to embrace the science of behavior to address serious human problems like violence and sustainability. There is, I believe, tremendous opportunity here for collaborative research. As cultural analytic science advances, it seems likely that partnerships like those behavior analysts are developing in Colombia and Brazil could contribute to human and cultural survival in ways that at present can only be vaguely envisioned. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)