Bricolage

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Richard Dean Anderson on the set for MacGyver, Circa 1985 - Archetype of Bricoleurs

The term bricolage (from French: bricoler tinkering, fumbling around), introduced into anthropology by Claude Lévi-Strauss in 1962 , stands for behavior in which the actor (bricoleur) solves problems with the resources available instead of special ones , especially for that Problem of obtaining designed funds.

introduction

Problem solving with the things that were at hand: Improvised capo

In his work La pensée sauvage (dt: The Wild Thinking ), the French ethnologist and linguist contrasted the planning-rational engineer with the improvising bricoleur in order to illustrate the different approaches: the engineer who builds on the foundations, rationally developing and the bricoleur improvising from what is available . The difference is a degree of degree. Both the bricoleur and the engineer cover the observed world with an already existing structure that enables them to decipher the meaning of the observation. For Lévi-Strauss, bricoleur and engineer are only metaphors for thinking in the Western tradition and for the thinking of people who were then referred to as primitive peoples .

Unlike Lévi-Strauss, other researchers understand differentiation as conceptual differences. Seen in this way, bricoleur and engineer become archetypal representatives of a school of thought. Ted Baker et al. the approach as a DPE (Design Precedes Execution ~ construction before execution) with the bricoleur who carries out the execution and construction at the same time.

The prime example of a bricoleur is the American television series hero MacGyver , played by Richard Dean Anderson , who always improvised a solution from the existing resources according to the script. Cunha and Cunha confront MacGyver with the likewise fictional character of James Bond , who solves his cases equipped with technical marvels from the production of " Q ".

The concept of resource use outside of its intended purpose has been adopted from anthropology in a wide variety of areas: cognitive science , linguistics, information technology , innovation research and organizational theory . Among the subject areas that the Bricolage adopted are the resilience of organizations, improvisation and sensemaking , entrepreneurship , as well as the use of technical systems and artifacts, which reflects the meaning originally used by Lévi-Strauss of "working with whatever- always-at-hand ”comes closest. In addition, the term is also used today in the description and analysis of youth culture .

Successful bricolage requires intimate knowledge of resources, careful observation, trust in one's own intuition, listening and the self-confidence that each enacted structure can correct itself if one's own ego is not too involved.

Bricolage after Lévi-Strauss

Lévi-Strauss used the contrast Bricoleur vs. Engineer as a metaphor for the way society thinks and works. Bricolage was based on three parts that together made up the process of bricolage.

He describes the first part as the repertoire , which is accumulated continuously without a specific goal in mind. It is made up of artefacts and knowledge of use, usability, methods and procedures and thus largely covers the term resource, which, however, does not have a meaningful need.

Differences according to Duymedjian and Rüling
Bricoleur engineer
metaphysics everything is significant

complex, interrelated systems,
closed universe,
cyclic time

A priori there is a hierarchical order

Reduction / decomposition
Openness that penetrates the boundaries.
Linear time

Epistemology Intimate knowledge, familiarity

Knowledge of relationships allows for low functional fixation.
Versatility leads to resilience.

Distant knowledge through representation

Knowledge of the structural characteristics of the work
items Specialization

practice Search and compilation by chance discovery

Unclear results
Dialogue with the elements of the repertoire
Diversity of resources
Assembly, replacement of functional parts
“It works”
Generation and use cannot be separated
The result cannot be compared with anything else

Search for appropriate, project-oriented resources

Project and design
Consequences of previously defined specifications
Seamlessly integrated systems
Assessment by comparison with the expected level of performance / quality
Separation of generation and use
Results are to be assessed using current standards

Lévi-Strauss calls the second part Dialogue and describes the process by which elements of the repertoire are connected with one another. Dialogue is the active relationship between elements of the repertoire and the goal to be achieved, the result of the bricolage process and thus the third part of Lévi-Strauss' parts. In his understanding, it is only appropriate to designate both the process and the result of the process as bricolage, since the process of creation and this result are inseparably related.

According to the Greek organizational researcher Yiannis Gabriel, the differentiation between engineer and bricoleur is gradual. The bricoleur differs from the engineer in that there is no "inappropriate" use of objects for him. He does not use elements carefully developed and finely tuned for the task, but assembles elements as needed or necessary that somehow fit into the whole. According to Gabriel, Bricolage is opportunistic, ad-hoc, misleading, creative and original, it continuously defines the tools for materials and materials for tools, and at the same time constantly redefines the task in view of the assigned meanings .

Duymedjian and Rüling differentiate between Bricoleur and Ingenieur according to the dimensions (see table opposite).

Applications of the approach

Organizational Resilience

In his analysis of the Mann Gulch forest fire, the American organizational psychologist Karl E. Weick combines bricolage with the resilience of organizations ( organizational resilience ) and describes it as the ability of an individual or an organization to survive a crisis and at the same time the ability to act and maintain identity awareness. Bricolage is suggested as a practically possible solution in crisis situations where DPE solutions can no longer be effective because the situation is developing in an unpredictable way and there is no time for planned solutions. Analysts on the euro crisis also claim that bricolage is the only way to deal with crises. At the same time, they emphasize the need to practice and plan for the unforeseen ( contingency planning ) in order to acquire the necessary skills for bricolage.

improvisation

In an investigation of the role of improvisation in tactics and strategy of companies in the knowledge society , Ted Baker et al. between improvisation and bricolage, whereby bricolage is often but not always associated with improvisation. With an on Christine Moorman and Anne S. Miner declining definition of improvisation as "the extent to which composition and design converge" ( "the degree to Which composition and execution converge" ) they contrast Bricolage as an activity where, contrary to the resource- procuring mentality only works with the resources of the repertoire (“Making due with the means or resources at hand”).

According to Baker's statements and confirmed by other research, improvisation implies bricolage, but bricolage does not imply improvisation, since bricolage can also be included in DPE approaches. The two concepts are different.

Youth culture

Bricolage (sometimes also called sampling ) describes in youth culture the technique of placing objects in a new context that does not correspond to the original normatives - artificially putting together clothes, symbols and emblems. Their original meaning can be changed or even canceled.

Examples of bricolage in punk are the use of safety pins as earrings or swastikas for provocation, without wanting to express National Socialist sentiments. The massive gold chains with which hip-hoppers demonstrate their social advancement are also a form of bricolage.

linguistics

The term also found its way into linguistics as a communication principle. So it is a characteristic especially of the youth languages and means there: “The playful tinkering with different speaking styles” (Schlobinski, Kohl, Ludewigt 1993). Young people in particular combine different speaking styles , especially when they are in a closer relationship with one another ( peer group ). They fall back on different cultural resources (films, series, advertising, music, sport, etc.) and bring them into the communication in different ways (alienated citation).

An expanded sociolinguistic conception of Bricolage not only encompasses tinkering with entire speaking styles, but also the inclusion and alienation of individual stylistic elements. Young people use different linguistic and cultural resources to create their own group-specific style and to position themselves socially.

literature

  • Claude Lévi-Strauss, The wild thinking

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ bricoler on www.leo.org; accessed on December 16, 2014
  2. ↑ a b c Claude Lévi-Strauss (1966) The savage mind ; University of Chicago Press; Chicago; cited in Raffi Duymedjian and Charles-Clemens Rüling (2010) Towards a Foundation of Bricolage in Organization and Management Theory ; Organization Studies 31 (2): 133-151; ISSN  0170-8406 .
  3. ↑ a b c Miguel Pina e Cunha and João Vieira da Cunha; Brilocage in Organizations: concept and Forms ; in Afzalur Rahim (Ed.) Current Topics in Management ; Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, 2007; ISBN 978-1-4128-0739-5 . Page 51–70.
  4. ↑ Kersten Knipp, From wild thinking to structuralism: Claude Lévi-Strauss turns 100 ; on the website of Deutsche Welle on November 27, 2008; accessed on June 8, 2015.
  5. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from September 20, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. : / Bricolage ; accessed on December 15, 2014.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.filmlexikon.uni-kiel.de
  6. ↑ Detlef Zöllner on Claude Lévi-Strauss, Das wilde Denk, Frankfurt a. M. 1973 (1962), May 18, 2013, in: http://erkenntnisethik.blogspot.de/ ; online .
  7. ↑ Ted Baker, Anne S. Miner, and Dale T. Eesley (2003) Improvising firms: Bricolage, account giving and improvisational competencies in the founding process. Research Policy, 32, 255-276; quoted in Miguel Pina e Cunha and João Vieira da Cunha; Brilocage in Organizations: concept and Forms ; in Afzalur Rahim (Ed.) Current Topics in Management ; Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, 2007; ISBN 978-1-4128-0739-5 . Page 51–70.
  8. ^ A b c d Ted Baker, Anne S. Miner and Dale T. Eesley (2002) Improvising firms: bricolage, account giving and improvisational competencies in the founding process ; 2002 Elsevier Science BV; PII: S0048-7333 (02) 00099-9.
  9. ↑ Tamara L. Giluk and Sara L. Rynes-Weller (2012) Research Findings Practitioners Resist: Lessons for Management Academics from Evidence-Based Medicine , in: Denise M. Rousseau (Eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Evidence-based Management ; Oxford University Press, Oxford; ISBN 978-0-19-976398-6 ; Pages 130-164.
  10. ↑ a b Raffi Duymedjian and Charles Clemens Rüling (2010) Towards a Foundation of Bricolage in Organization and Management Theory ; Organization Studies 31 (2): 133-151; ISSN  0170-8406 .
  11. ^ A b Peter Schlobinski, Gaby Kohl, Irmgard Ludewigt: Youth language. Fiction and reality . Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1993, ISBN 3-531-12268-1 .
  12. ^ A b Karl E. Weick, 1993: The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster ; Administrative Science Quarterly, 38; 628–652, online (PDF; 1.5 MB)
  13. ↑ a b c d e Raffi Duymedjian and Charles-Clemens Rüling (2010) Towards a Foundation of Bricolage in Organization and Management Theory Organization Studies 31 (2): 133-151, ISSN  0170-8406 .
  14. ^ Yiannis Gabriel (2002) Essal: On Paragrammatic Uses of Organizational Theory - A Provocation ; Organization Studies 2002, 23/1, 133–151.
  15. ↑ Benjamin Braun (2013) Preparedness, Crisis Management and Policy Change: The Euro Area at the Critical Juncture of 2008-2013 , British Journal of Politics and International Relations, September 2013, doi: 10.1111 / 1467-856X.12026 .
  16. ↑ Christine Moorman and Anne S. Miner (1998). Organizational Improvisation and Organizational Memory ; Academy of Management Review 23, 698-723, cited in Ted Baker, Anne S. Miner, and Dale T. Eesley (2002) Improvising firms: bricolage, account giving and improvisational competencies in the founding process ; 2002 Elsevier Science BV; PII: S0048-7333 (02) 00099-9.
  17. ^ Levi-Strauss, C., 1966. The Savage Mind. University of Chicago Press, Chicago cited in Ted Baker, Anne S. Miner, and Dale T. Eesley (2002) Improvising firms: bricolage, account giving and improvisational competencies in the founding process ; 2002 Elsevier Science BV; PII: S0048-7333 (02) 00099-9
  18. ^ Karl E. Weick, (1998) Improvisation as a mindset for organizational studies. Administrative Science Quarterly 41, 301-313; cited in Ted Baker, Anne S. Miner and Dale T. Eesley (2002) Improvising firms: bricolage, account giving and improvisational competencies in the founding process ; 2002 Elsevier Science BV; PII: S0048-7333 (02) 00099-9.
  19. ↑ Andreas Hepp, Rainer Winter (editor) Culture - Media - Power: Cultural Studies and Media Analysis Media - Culture - Communication ; Springer-Verlag, 2008, ISBN 9783531162775 ; Page 243 ff.
  20. ↑ Harald Burger (editor) Phraseologie / Phraseology , Volume 1 in the series Hand Bücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationwissenschaft / Handbooks of Linguistics and Communication Science (HSK) ; Walter de Gruyter, 2007; ISBN 9783110197136 ; Page 261 ff.
  21. ^ Esther Galliker: Bricolage. A communicative genre as used by young people from German-speaking Switzerland. Lang, 2014, doi : 10.3726 / 978-3-653-03994-8 .