KURT LEWIN – SOCIAL SCIENT IST OR （KURT LEWINu2014u2014社会有技巧的坚持）.pdfVIP

KURT LEWIN – SOCIAL SCIENTIST OR POSTMODERN CRITIC? KURT LEWIN – SOCIAL SCIENTIST OR POSTMODERN CRITIC? Introduction This paper presents, what in my view are, significant contributions of Kurt Lewin to postmodern perspectives on culture and critical theory. Kurt Lewin was born, eldest of four children, in 1890 in Prussia (Poland) in a middle class Jewish family. Although Prussia was part of Germany at that time, it was more anti-Semitic than the rest of Germany. He grew up experiencing oppression and exclusion in Christian schools. Nevertheless, as a patriotic German, Lewin fought bravely in the First World War and received an Iron Cross. Lewin’s Jewish origin made him sensitive to social and communal problems of his times. Lewin’s biographer, Marrow (1969), claims that these oppressive experiences account for Lewin’s interest in group dynamics. As a social democrat, Lewin constantly discussed issues that related to democracy and societal reorganization. He was strongly influenced by the holistic approach of Gestalt psychology and neo-Kantian philosophy of science that championed a critical examination of scientific concepts, theories, values, and their validity. He first came to the United States as a visiting professor to Stanford University in 1932 (and formally immigrated to the U.S. with his wife daughter in 1933 and became a naturalized citizen in 1940). He taught at Cornell University (for two years), University of Iowa (for ten years), and finally the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (for just two years) until his premature death in 1947. Although he began thinking and writing in English only after visiting the U.S., his achievements are undoubtedly monumental considering his seminal ideas on action research,field theory ,force field analysis, group dynamics, and organizational development theory still define the respective fields! Lewin Nathan Balasubra