Exploring Action Research from a Social Field Perspective

Abstract

In this piece we share our discovery process as action researchers in an online, global change initiative that emerged during the first lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic, 2020. In the spirit of sharing our work "in the making" we aim to make visible our own reflection process and the questions that surface from it. In particular, we share and explore our realization that in order to fully serve the transformational intention of the initiative and the research itself, we needed to expand our research framework mid-process. The framework that best serves the emergent and transformative nature of the initiative is one that both supports awareness-based action and generates widely applicable knowledge; that integrates a variety of perspectives on social phenomena (first-, second-, and third-person); and that aims to bring systematic inquiry both to the observable phenomena and the deeper underlying dimensions. The approach requires us to make visible our assumptions and to integrate and validate different epistemologies, including relational, intuitive and aesthetic knowing. As such, the approach to research we suggest here can be thought of as an epistemological framework itself.

A Matter of Dis/Embodied Non/Relating in Art Psychotherapy Practices

“…The nature of boundaried materiality is the potentiality of becoming rather than a reductive notion of the skin that privileges an individualised human-centric mind, over the collective and material despite increasing evidence suggesting that we exist in a social field (Pomeroy et al, 2021;Poudel, 2020).…”

Nurturing Activism

“…In my own context it was by stepping within the social field that I could reflect on my own first-person experiences recognizing the ways I already formed part of it. Pomeroy et al (2021) speak to recognizing and naming the social field as key to creating collective awareness of it. By visualizing it and presenting back, we were able to engage in a deeper dialogue that allowed the group to "sense itself" in the moment, something Scharmer (2018) describes as presencing.…”

Radical Participatory Design

“…There is still more work to do to decolonize awareness-based systems change methods which are not yet or not necessarily radically participatory. The MAPA innovation lab (Sbardelini et al, 2022), social field action research (Pomeroy et al, 2021;Wilson, 2021), systemic constellations (Ritter & Zamierowski, 2021), and social field pattern development, including social presencing theater work (Gonçalves & Hayashi, 2021), still maintain a difference between participants and researchers, researchers who planned or analyzed alone or chose methodologies for participants. Even Global Social Witnessing (GSW), a contemplative social cognition practice that facilitates mindful witnessing of critical events, is not necessarily participatory and can even be done alone without a community (Matoba, 2021).…”