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This paper provides an introduction to Critical Utopian Action Research (CUAR) as a methodology with a strong emphasis on combining critical analysis, imaginative thinking, and everyday life-based actions toward societal democratization. First, we situate CUAR in the light of current societal frameworks asking: Why the need for CUAR? We then briefly mark theoretical sources of inspiration before focusing on the Future Creating Workshop as a way to elicit what CUAR is from a methodological point of view. We exemplify how the workshop functions before we finally discuss what kind of contributions CUAR might enable in the context of local communities, workplaces, organizations, and broader societal settings.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to introduce the reader to the Nordic tradition of Critical Utopian Action Research (CUAR) and to demonstrate how CUAR might reinvigorate participatory democracy as an intrinsic characteristic of social enterprise. This leads us to sketch out the beginnings of how researchers might work with communities to help realise their democratic impulses through social enterprise. Design/methodology/approach This paper aims to synthesise the participatory action research literature, particularly CUAR, with literature on social enterprise and democracy to demonstrate how the two approaches might fruitfully be combined. Findings The authors show how CUAR might be utilised by researchers, to articulate new social enterprise organisational responses to local problems or to reinvigorate democracy within existing social enterprises. Originality/value This exploratory paper marks (we believe) the first attempt to bring together social enterprise and CUAR.