112 Marie-Cécile Bertau and John L. Roberts
methodological pragmatism conjoined with programs of social
improvement within an industrial culture. As to methodological
pragmatism, it would matter less that laws of learning or behavior related
to specific biological determinants (such as instinct or reflex) and more
that the quantifiable patterns of learning (such as reinforcement schemes in
factory or school settings) could be discerned as ways of explaining human
action—this was seen as pragmatic, i.e., useful. Other than explanation, the
social ends to these inquiries, of course, had their sights set on prediction
and control. Bandura’s (1973) theory of observational or social cognitive
learning – where learning occurs through observing others rather than by
direct reinforcement – provides a contemporary illustration of both the
deficits of classical and operant conditioning as well as its bent towards
social engineering. An obvious example in our contemporary scene for
application of social learning theory concerns the issue of whether
exposure to violence in media (i.e., film, television, internet, and video
games) leads people to behave more aggressively (i.e., learn through
observing aggressive behavior). Significantly, the apparently benign
address of media violence as a public health concern (Bushman &
Huesmann, 2001) disguises or hides the historicity of the behavioral
technologies to shape forms of human being and subjectivity through
practices that replicate socio-economic instrumentalities.
2.4. Alignment to the Efficiency Agenda
From a larger historical perspective, American social science has been
marked by its alienation from historical forms of subjectivity and
consciousness; that is, social science has separated itself from how the
dominant capitalistic culture and its history shapes forms of subjectivity
and consciousness and has thus masked the role of history in conceiving
subjectivity and consciousness by setting both these phenomena rather as
“naturally given.” In contrast, as Danziger (1997) observes, social science
research is pervasively connected with the uncovering of natural laws of
learning while being always intertwined with various forms of schooling