How can we change the world? Channelling behaviour with Installations

Lecture by Saadi Lahlou, Director of the Paris IAS

Sciences in Context is a new public lecture series, which aims to bring concepts and perspectives from the frontiers of the humanities to the CRI community.

Each lecture will take place on the last Tuesday of the month, featuring fellows from CRI and from the Institut d'Études Avancées (IEA) de Paris.

Lecture topics will be discussed in an open session of the Practical Philosophy Club on the Friday before each lecture, to facilitate an active and participatory discourse with the invited speaker.

Exceptionally, the first lecture will take place on the first Tuesday of March!

Abstract:

In this talk I will present a new unit of analysis for behaviour, 'installations', that is handy to design behavioural change interventions in the real world. 'Installations' are the familiar, socially constructed, apparatuses which elicit, enable, scaffold and control - and make predictable most of our 'normal' behaviour; from shower-cabins or airport check-ins to family dinners, classes or hospitals. I shall describe their threefold structure with a new model enabling systematic and practical analysis of their components. I will describe some of the essential mechanisms of their construction, resilience and evolution. I shall also provide some practical advice to design change interventions based on this framework.

Biosketch:

Professor Lahlou has worked in industry R&D for 15 years, in government (French Prime Minister’s strategy unit), and academia. He directed 5 research units: in Consumer Research, Sociology of Organizations, Cognitive Science and Social Psychology; and now the transdisciplinary Paris Institute for Advanced Study.

His research focuses on behavioural change and design; especially involving ICT and participative design; training and digital ethnography. He has published over 200 scientific papers. The recently published “Installation Theory: The Societal Construction and Regulation of Behaviour” (Cambridge University Press, 2018) is his 5th book.

This lecture series is organized by Muriel Mambrini, Pascal Kolbe, and Johannes Jaeger, in collaboration with the Institut d'Études Avancées de Paris.