Critical Utopian Action Research

Development of CUAR in Theory and Practice

There are four sources of inspiration for CUAR: (1) critical theory, with the idea of turning theory upside down in the sense that theory understood as critical thinking should express an understanding of what is in the light of what should be; (2) the work of Kurt Lewin on democracy and participative change; (3) socio-technical action research and the work with organization and social development and (4) future research and the underlining of social imagination and utopian-oriented ideas. From these four sources, Kurt Aagaard Nielsen, Birger Steen Nielsen and Peter Olsén developed the theoretical and practical framework of CUAR.

The CUAR tradition is characterized by its practical interpretation of critical theory. Critical theory represents an intellectual practice working with analyses of modern society within the framework of philosophy, social science and culture. The classical critical theorists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer were occupied with the relation between science and democracy and argued that if science is not democratic in its way of investigating the world, it will only confirm an undemocratic reality. Their errand was critical. If science only deals with observational facts, as positivism suggests, and science at [Page 231]the same time becomes an important or the important player in development and planning, then humanism and democratic values will become excluded as essential dynamics because these kinds of values are not observational facts. A consequence of this is that society will end up being based upon an authoritarian and technocratic logic of development. These points are shared by Lewin, but unlike Adorno and Horkheimer, he believed that social science was able to play a positive, reformist role without ending up being integrated into the existing alienated society. For CUAR, this step towards a practically oriented science or research is an important part of the inspiration gained from Lewin. Implied in this is the argument that it is not only for scientific reasons that researchers working together with participants should be involved in the research field but also because there is a normative perspective holding that with the more active role of the researcher, they will be able to influence culture and society in a different way from other research disciplines holding a more passive role of the researcher. It is a way of thinking that when more participatory learning and change processes are included in the way research is conducted, it will influence the results and make society more democratic.

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