4D Mapping
An Embodied Awareness-Based Approach to Regenerative Organizational Development
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47061/jasc.v5i1.9213Keywords:
4D Mapping, Social Presencing Theater, system sensing, social fields, embodied knowing, regenerative organizational developmentAbstract
This paper examines 4D Mapping, a methodology within Social Presencing Theater (SPT), as an awareness-based approach to regenerative organizational development in an era of polycrisis. When working with complex systems change, practitioners face the fundamental challenge of navigating transformation beyond predictability and control, where the intervention is not ‘made’, but rather emerges from a relational field. While organizational development offers numerous theories and tools for planned change, we propose that transformative practices require integrating systems thinking with systems sensing—an embodied, felt-sense approach that activates both heart and sensory awareness, enabling systems to see and sense themselves.
We develop the '4D Social Field Matrix' as a theoretical framework that shows how 4D Mapping integrates multiple ways of knowing as a social field intervention. Drawing from case examples across Latin America, North America, and Europe—ranging from water management, forest conservation governance, Indigenous organization, and youth empowerment—we illustrate the theoretical and methodological foundations of 4D Mapping and how it gives voice to more-than-human stakeholders in complex systems challenges. By making these foundations explicit, we aim to deepen practitioner awareness regarding this social field intervention, including the underlying view of the practice, and clarifying its epistemological foundations. Our findings hope to contribute to both theory and practice by articulating how embodied methodologies and Social Arts can support emergent organizational change, tapping into regenerative potential and vitality of systems.
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