In recent years there has been some evidence of a resurgence of interest in experiential groupwork methods such as T-groups among cooperative and community development workers, feminists, and those concerned with heightening sensitivity to social problems. Two adult educators who believed that experiential laboratory methods can enable students to develop their sociological imagination and to understand some of the relations between their personal history and the social structure within which they operate. They constructed an economic model of interpersonal behavior and applied it in the development of training designs for use with large groups. In so doing they adapted methods experienced in T-group laboratories and used a variety of action research techniques. One event was the Mini-Economy. This 3-day residential event used an experiential approach to explore the way in which interpersonal behavior is affected by economic structures, by creating an economic system in microcosm. Participants paid a fee according to real-life income; daily allowances corresponded to fees. The community was, therefore, faced with the problem of individuals with widely disparate resources and in the course of the event participants ran the gamut of historical social change in the attempt to set up new and workable economic systems. Participants from a wide variety of backgrounds felt that the insights they gained were of relevance to their everyday lives and results seemed to support the potential for exploring economic and social issues in group relations laboratory methods. (YLB)