bricolage
Bricolage Reference library
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
... (Fr., ‘doing odd jobs’). A characteristic (according to C. Lévi-Strauss ) of the early human mind, in contrast to modern scientific thinking. But bricolage is entirely rational (i.e. not pre-rational). A bricoleur is one who improvises and uses any means or materials which happen to be lying around in order to tackle a task. In the making of myth , bricolage is the use of whatever happens to be ‘lying around’, so that myth is both rational and also...
bricolage Quick reference
A Dictionary of Human Geography
... An entity that is built out of whatever materials happen to be available. Places, such as shanty towns , might be described as bricolage; they are built out of a diverse set of materials and seem to lack order, appearing somewhat ramshackle. Similarly postmodern architecture that draws together diverse styles, forms, and building materials, or postmodern thought that draws on a diverse set of intellectual ideas and melds them together, constitutes a form of bricolage...
bricolage n. Quick reference
A Dictionary of Psychology (4 ed.)
... n. A term used especially in writings on qualitative research to characterize the use of multiple diverse research methods, such as observation, interviewing, interpretation of textual material, and introspection, together with multiple theoretical approaches. bricoleur n. One who practises bricolage. [From French bricolage DIY (do-it-yourself) or the hobby of constructing and repairing household objects and systems, first applied to research by the French social anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss ( 1908–2009 ) in a publication in 1966...
bricolage Quick reference
A Dictionary of Critical Theory
... The French word for ‘tinkering’, ‘making do’, or even ‘DIY’. Someone who engages in bricolage is known as a bricoleur , which is the equivalent of ‘handyman’ or ‘jack of all trades’. It has passed into the critical theory lexicon because of French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss 's comparison of western science and ‘primitive’ mythic thought in La Pensée sauvage ( 1962 ), translated as The Savage Mind ( 1966 ), arguing that the latter is a kind of bricolage because it is constrained to work with existing material and is therefore only...
bricolage Quick reference
A Dictionary of Critical Theory (2 ed.)
... The French word for ‘tinkering’, ‘making do’, or even ‘DIY’. Someone who engages in bricolage is known as a bricoleur , which is the equivalent of ‘handyman’ or ‘jack of all trades’. It has passed into the critical theory lexicon because of French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss ’s comparison of western science and ‘primitive’ mythic thought in La Pensée sauvage ( 1962 ), translated as The Savage Mind ( 1966 ), arguing that the latter is a kind of bricolage because it is constrained to work with existing material and is therefore only...
bricolage
Dictionary of the Social Sciences
... A metaphor introduced by Claude Lévi-Strauss to describe the improvised construction of mythical thought from the heterogeneous, often recycled materials of earlier myths, stories, and experiences. In French, the term refers to the work of a handyman or jack-of-all-trades. Following Jacques Derrida 's characterization of bricolage as the condition of all discourse and cultural production ( Writing and Difference , 1978 ), it has become a widely used and debated...
bricolage Quick reference
The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (4 ed.)
... [ brik-ŏ-lah zh ] A French term for improvisation or a piece of makeshift handiwork. It is sometimes applied to artistic works in a sense similar to collage : an assemblage improvised from materials ready to hand, or the practice of transforming ‘found’ materials by incorporating them in a new work. Verb : bricoler...
bricolage Quick reference
A Dictionary of Geography (5 ed.)
... Initially, a term used in the arts as the process of transforming the meaning of objects or symbols through novel uses or unconventional arrangements of unrelated things. The term bricolage was introduced, in the context of linguistics, by C. Lévi-Strauss (1962–2009), who used the metaphor of the bricoleur (handyman) to stand for the practice of creating things out of whatever materials come to hand. From there, it was a short step to using the term as ‘an entity that is built out of whatever materials happen to be available’ (A. Rogers, N. Castree,...
bricolage Quick reference
A Dictionary of Sports Studies
... In French, do-it-yourself; the most prominent do-it-yourself chain store in modern, and patriarchal, France has been Monsieur Bricolage . In cultural analysis, the term derives from work in French anthropology, and refers to the process of the formation of a ‘new’ cultural object on the basis of the appropriation and combination of different cultural elements; mixing images into new formations can challenge and change meanings. The concept was applied to youth subcultures by researchers at the University of Birmingham's Centre for Contemporary Cultural...
bricolage Quick reference
A Dictionary of Media and Communication (3 ed.)
... The appropriation of pre-existing materials that are ready-to-hand to create something new (Lévi-Strauss). This creation both reflects and constructs the bricoleur ’s identity . The term is widely used to refer to the intertextual authorial practice of adopting and adapting fragments from other texts and to the ways in which consumers make use of commercial products and/or their advertising for their own purposes , making them their own by giving them new meanings ( see also demassification ). Turkle uses the term to refer to the way...
bricolage Quick reference
A Dictionary of Gangs
... In relation to clothing and popular culture, a term used to indicate how signs or symbols with well-established meaning are given new, coded meaning. Developed by Claude Levi-Strauss, the Birmingham School and later cultural criminology borrowed this term to describe how youth cultures take common objects and bestow new and different meaning and significance upon them. For example, gang members might wear a baseball hat with the insignia of a major sports team that is also the insignia of the gang. Further reading: S. Booth , ‘Gang symbols’. In...
bricolage noun Reference library
The Oxford Essential Dictionary of Foreign Terms in English
... noun M20 French (from bricoler to do odd jobs, repair, from as next). Construction or creation from whatever is immediately available for use; something constructed or created in this way, an assemblage of haphazard or incongruous...
