What is your life space?
Kurt Lewin, the social psychologist who created action research, fled Nazi Germany in 1933, and his experiences of anti-Semitism color his work. His papers seem focused on a single question: “Why do people hate me so much?”
Lewin saw society as a “life space” in which we are connected with each other in various ways. Understanding that space is key to social change. How do people move around in this space in their daily lives? How do they get what they need? How freely can they get from one place to another? What forces direct or block them from getting to where they want to go?
And most important of all: What does moving within that space do to the people who are part of it? What habits of living and thinking arise depending on the possibilities open to us?
If we find our paths systemically blocked, he argued, the forces and tensions will build. We will start to turn against one another. And the people who feel it the most will be those in minority positions, internalizing the hatred and resentment they experience in their souls, minds, and bodies.
Lewin’s response to this problem is action research, outlined in a short study published a year before his death in 1947. Lewin believed that if we want to change a social system, we need to change how people within that system see the system and relate to each other.
We don’t start by trying to change individual actors but by building small groups that force people outside of their customary paths—a process Lewin called “unfreezing”—and put them into conversation with people who are different. And then we give them a job to do that’s bigger than the things that are pulling them apart.
Working in small towns in Connecticut, Lewin conducted workshops that put Black and white people together into groups tasked with answering three questions: “1. What is the present situation? 2. What are the dangers? 3. And most important of all, what shall we do?”
Alongside their research, participants also received support to build relationships and continue their efforts after the study concluded.
And it worked. The groups became co-operative teams focused on something bigger than themselves and developed concrete plans and projects to improve their lives together.
“I could not help feeling that the close integration of action, training, and research holds tremendous possibilities for the field of inter-group relations,” Lewin wrote at the study’s conclusion. “I would like to pass on this feeling to you.”
