Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Installation Theory
  • Cited by 28
      • Saadi Lahlou, London School of Economics and Political Science
      Show more authors
      • You may already have access via personal or institutional login
    • Select format
    • Publisher:
      Cambridge University Press
      Publication date:
      December 2017
      February 2018
      ISBN:
      9781316480922
      9781107137592
      9781316502747
      DOI:
      https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316480922
      Dimensions:
      (228 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.96kg, 520 Pages
      Dimensions:
      (229 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.93kg, 529 Pages
      • Subjects:
      Social Psychology, Applied Psychology, Psychology
    You may already have access via personal or institutional login
    • Selected: Digital
    Add to cart View cart Buy from Cambridge.org
    Subjects:
    Social Psychology, Applied Psychology, Psychology
    Information

    Book description

    Installation Theory: The Societal Construction and Regulation of Behaviour provides researchers and practitioners with a simple and powerful framework to analyse and change behaviour. Informed by a wide range of empirical evidence, it includes an accessible synthesis of former theories (ecological psychology, activity theory, situated action, distributed cognition, social constructionism, actor-network theory and social representations). '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. The book describes their threefold structure with a new model enabling systematic and practical analysis of their components. It details the mechanisms of their construction, resilience and evolution, illustrated with dozens of examples, from restaurants to nuclear plant operation. The book also provides a detailed analysis of the processes of creation and selection of innovations, proposing a model for the maintenance and evolution of social systems.

    Reviews

    'Installation Theory: an impressive, powerful synthesis and a bold, wide-encompassing theory that any social scientist will need to consider.'

    Claude Fischler - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris

    'Installation Theory offers an ambitious, wholly original, and timely contribution to social science’s engagement in rapidly changing, technologically driven lifeworlds. Lahlou brings to his theoretical framework an extraordinary transdisciplinary skill set (social psychology, biology, statistics, economics, cognitive science, industrial engineer, management, to name a few). Installation theory is new to me, as it will be to most readers, but the framework is worth opening the intellectual door. The paradigm assembles subjective, material, and institutional affordances of socio-technical devices to explain how coordination of human behavior is induced, sustained, and transformed and offers practical insight into pressing design roadblocks to achieving health, civic, and economic goals.'

    Elinor Ochs - University of California, Los Angeles

    'Increasing attention is devoted to understanding the genetic and neural basis of human behaviour. This book explores behaviour in the multiple, every-day settings of social life. By linking the physical environment with our cognitive interpretative flexibility and with social norms and regulation a non-deterministic understanding emerges how living together can be better managed and (re)designed. For everyone interested in how innovation and change can be re-assembled with the continuity of the old, Lahlou offers a solid and practice-oriented approach - novel and exciting!'

    Helga Nowotny - Former President European Research Council

    'Installation Theory achieves an important integration of the behavioral and social sciences by calling attention to a number of obstacles behavioral/social scientists prefer to ignore, by achieving ecological validity. Lahlou's important book is a careful study of a wide range of daily life practices and reveals the complexity of 'ruled behavior'. The book will challenge all behavioral/social science disciplines.'

    Aaron Cicourel - University of California, San Diego

    'Saadi Lahlou offers an ambitious, expansive and highly original theoretical synthesis to account for the social regulation of human behaviour. Installation Theory deserves the full attention of social scientists for its fecund approach to understanding of and practical intervention in the social world.'

    Alan Warde - University of Manchester

    'While I am confident that Lahlou’s Installation Theory will be of lasting value for the scientific enterprise, I am hopeful it will also be a basis for the radical changes our world requires.'

    James D. Hollan - Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego

    'Lahlou presents a bold and innovative theory of social stability and change. At the centre is a multi-level model analysing the opportunities and constraints on behaviour of the physical, institutional and psychological environments. The many implications for, and examples of, behaviour change remind me of Kurt Lewin’s dictum 'there is nothing so practical as good theory'.'

    George Gaskell - London School of Economics and Political Science

    Refine List

    Actions for selected content:

    Select all | Deselect all
    • View selected items
    • Export citations
    • Download PDF (zip)
    • Save to Kindle
    • Save to Dropbox
    • Save to Google Drive

    Save Search

    You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

    Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
    Cancel
    ×

    Contents

    Contents

    Metrics

    Altmetric attention score

    Full text views

    Total number of HTML views: 0
    Total number of PDF views: 0 *
    Loading metrics...

    Book summary page views

    Total views: 0 *
    Loading metrics...

    * Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

    Usage data cannot currently be displayed.

    Accessibility standard: Unknown

    Why this information is here

    This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.

    Accessibility Information

    Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.