Lévi-Strauss's concept of bricolage, first formulated in La Pensée sauvage in 1962, was originally presented as an analogy for how mythical thought works, selecting the fragments or left-overs of previous cultural formations and re-deploying them in new combinations. Significantly, from its source in structural anthropology, the concept has travelled in two directions, towards both the sciences and the humanities. The aim of this article is to return to Lévi-Strauss's original formulation of bricolage in order to explore the ways in which (...) this technical metaphor transcends its status as simply a metaphor and becomes something like a universal concept. As the key opposition between the bricoleur and the engineer demonstrates, bricolage is also an ideological construct which carries with it a set of suppositions about the nature of science and technology in the post-war world. Looking at the wider scientific imaginary which informs this vision — in particular, Lévi-Strauss's representation of nuclear science — the article concludes by arguing for a more comprehensive understanding of the concept of bricolage as applicable not simply to traditional or residual forms of human activity, but also to the practice — and indeed the essence — of modern scientific and technological development. (shrink)

Nursing practice as bricoleur activity: a concept explored The debates concerning the nature of nursing practice are often rooted in tensions between artistic, scientific and magical/mythical practice. It is within this context that the case is argued for considering that nursing practice involves bricoleur activity. This stance, which is derived from the work of Levi‐Strauss, conceives elements of nursing practice as an embodied, bricoleur practice where practitioners draw on the ‘shards and fragments’ of the situation‐at‐hand to resolve (...) the needs of the individual patient for whom they care. This conceptualisation of nursing practice will be analysed with a particular emphasis on its implication for nursing epistemology, pedagogy and praxis. The evidence to support this argument is drawn from empirical work that investigated nurses’ use of intuition, the work of Levi‐Strauss, and issues in nursing epistemology and ontology. The paper itself is written from the perspective of a bricoleur who uses ‘bits and pieces’ from the domains of nursing, philosophy, psychology, education, sociology and anthropology. (shrink)

This article reconceptualises school teachers and pupils respectively as ‘pedagogical bricoleurs’ and ‘bricolage researchers’ who utilise a multiplicity of theories, concepts, methodologies and pedagogies in teaching and/or researching. This reconceptualisation is based on a coalescence of generic curricular and pedagogical principles promoting dialogic, critical and enquiry-based learning. Innovative proposals for reconceptualising the aims, contents and methods of multi-faith Religious Education in English state-maintained schools without a religious affiliation are described, so as to provide an instance of and occasion for the (...) implications of these theories and concepts of learning. With the aim of initiating pupils into the communities of academic enquiry concerned with theology and religious studies, the ‘RE-searchers approach’ to multi-faith Religious Education in primary schools (5–11 year olds) is cited as a highly innovative means of converting these curricular and pedagogical principles and proposals into practical classroom procedures. These procedures are characterised by multi-, inter- and supra-disciplinarity; notions of eclecticism, emergence, flexibility and plurality; and theoretical and conceptual complexity, contestation and context-dependence. (shrink)

In America in the 1960s, ethics was out of fashion. Scientists tended to think it was as wooly and "ideological" as religion, and many philosophers agreed. But advances in the biosciences and biotechnologies made the need for ethical reflection hard to ignore. Ethics needed what today we would call rebranding.The new field devoted to questions arising with advances in the biosciences and biotechnologies would be called "bioethics." As theologian Warren Reich put it when reflecting back on the birth of bioethics (...) in the late 1960s, The field of bioethics started with the word bioethics because the word is so suggestive and so powerful; it suggests a new focus, a new bringing together of disciplines in a new way with... (shrink)

The power of some new entrants to the music industry derives from their position as brokers in computer-mediated environments. Brokers act instrumentally to exploit their position within a network which, in turn, depends on their ability to build and sustain links (and, in computer-mediated environments, hyperlinks). Bricolage in computer-mediated entrepreneurship refers to the intuitive manipulation of resources in order to achieve (perhaps tacit) goals. Without careful stewardship of the new intellectual wealth thus created, bricolage may profit neither the individual nor (...) the wider community. (shrink)

Głównym celem artykułu jest ponowne przemyślenie pojęcia Kartezjańskiego cogito, podjęte w kontekście teorii czynności i wytworów, oraz ogólnej teorii ludzkiej twórczości. Końcowy wniosek to stwierdzenie, że Kartezjańskie cogito nie jest podmiotem lecz aktem albo czynnością. Ten akt, albo ciąg aktów (działalność), łączy podmiot z przedmiotem. Taki wniosek jest jednocześnie mostem prowadzącym od kartezjańskiego metodologicznym sceptycyzmu do teorii aktów intencjonalnych zaproponowanej przez Franciszka Brentana i jego następców.

The aim of this article is to return to the concept of bricolage as theorized in 1962 by the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and examine its presence and utility in the art and architectural history of the twentieth century. While Lévi-Strauss was the first theorist to present bricolage as an analogy for the creation of mythical thought among indigenous cultures, the concept has seen a wide range of conceptual, methodological and practical applications across different fields, including design, visual arts, urban (...) planning and the built environment. This article will examine the applicability of bricolage as a technical metaphor for the creative process and its relevance to artistic creation by tracing its trajectory over the course of the twentieth century. It will evaluate the significance of objects and events of ‘everyday life’ in the creative practices of contemporary artists, and draw attention to the emerging role of the architect as bricoleur or improviser, to conclude that it was the art of the ‘ordinary’ that gave creative inspiration to twentieth-century artists and architects to engage with the materiality and past experiences of the world. (shrink)

The notion of researcher as craftsman is not new. This article takes the analogy further, exploring the similarities between the research student’s journey and the artisan’s transition from apprentice to journeyman to member of the guild, in the light of the author’s own PhD experience. Having completed her apprenticeship with the MSc, she compares her doctoral explorations of the existing literature and the methodology texts with the medieval journeyman’s migration from one master craftsman to another, incorporating the knowledge acquired into (...) the eventual masterpiece which determines entry to the guild and perpetuates the myth of a linear research process as against the reiterative reality of the qualitative research journey. The relationship between journeyman and master is key. Reflecting on her experience, the author suggests that communication and clear expectations have been vital success factors for her. Progress reports and conference papers have been tangible evidence of the distance covered. This evidence, combined with continual updating of a route map, incorporating outputs, due dates, and so forth, has prevented total disorientation. As she nears the end of her journey, she hopes this article conveys something of the hills and valleys along the way, and offers a gleam of light for future and fellow travellers. (shrink)

In the late 1990s, when otherwise healthy women in Aotearoa New Zealand started to die as a result of venous thrombosis attributed to third generation oral contraceptive pills, this contraceptive technology became the subject of media scrutiny and professional re-investigation. This research utilizes a qualitative methodology to explore the accounts of a small selection of contraceptive consumers. Many of this study’s consumers constructed an alternative framing of the 3GOC controversy, which accessed official information (such as medical statistics) but critically framed (...) these facts by grounding them in relation to how their bodies reacted to pharmaceuticals. Bricolage is used as a metaphor for thinking about the ways that women engage in decision-making by creating ‘toolboxes’ from a multitude of readily available material and information. Lévi-Strauss’s original formulation of bricolage, in particular the claim that bricoleurs do not create ‘new knowledge’, is critiqued. (shrink)

Some evolutionary psychologists contend that the best way to discover the functions of our present psychological systems is by appealing to the notion of functional mesh, that is, the assumed tight fit between a trait's design and the adaptive problem it is supposed to solve. In this paper, I argue that there exist theoretical considerations and empirical evidence that undermine this assumption of optimal design. Instead, I suggest that cognitive systems are constrained by what I call bounded functionality. This proposal (...) makes use of Jacob's (1977) notion of evolution as a bricoleur and Simon's (1981) idea that problems can have ``satisficing'' solutions. Functional mesh will thus be shown to neglect constraints that are necessary to explain the evolution of psychological mechanisms. (shrink)

Context: The idea for this article sprang from a desire to revive a conversation with the late Ernst von Glasersfeld on the heuristic function - and epistemological status - of forms of ideations that resist linguistic or empirical scrutiny. A close look into the uses of humor seemed a thread worth pursuing, albeit tenuous, to further explore some of the controversies surrounding the evocative power of the imaginal and other oblique forms of knowing characteristic of creative individuals. Problem: People generally (...) respond to humor, i.e., they are inclined to smile at things they find funny. People like to crack jokes, make puns, and, starting at age two, human infants engage in pretense or fantasy play. Research on creativity, on the other hand, has mostly scorned the trickster within. Cognitivists in particular are quick to relegate wit, whimsy, and even playfulness to the ranks of artful or poetic frivolities. Method: We use the emblems of the craftsman, the trickster, and the poet to highlight some of the oblique ways of knowing by which creative thinkers bring forth new insights. Each epitomizes dimensions intrinsic to the art of “possibilizing.” Taken together, they help us better understand what it means to be playful beyond curious, rigorous beyond reasonable, and why this should matter, even to constructivists! Results: The musings characteristic of creative individuals speak to intelligent beings’ ability to use glitches intentionally or serendipitously as a means to open up possibilities; to hold on to a thought before spelling it out; and to resist treating words or images as conventional and arbitrary signs regardless of their evocative power. To fall into nominalism, Bachelard insisted, is a poet’s nightmare! Implications: Psyche is image, said Jung, and when we feel alive we rely on the imaginal to guide our reason. Note that image is not here to be understood as a picture in the head or a photographic snapshot of the world. The imaginal does not represent, it brings forth what we understand beyond words. It does not lock us into a single mode. Instead, it is a call to be mindful, in Ellen Langer’s sense: in the present, mentally alert, and on the outlook for our psyche’s own surprising wisdom (sagacity. Constructivist content: Debates on the heuristic function and epistemological status of oblique ways of knowing have long occupied constructivist scholars. I can only guess whether my uses of Jung’s imaginal or Bachelard’s anti-nominalism would have amused or exasperated Ernst! I do know that, on occasion, Ernst the connoisseur, bricoleur, and translator allowed the rationalist-within to include the poet’s power to evoke as a legitimate form of rationality. He himself has written about oblique knowing as legit! (shrink)

This article addresses how the field of religion and science will change in the coming decades by analyzing the attitudes of emerging adults. I first present an overview of emerging adulthood to set the context for my analysis, especially highlighting the way in which emerging adults find themselves “in between” and in an “age of possibilities," free to explore a variety of options and thus often become “spiritual bricoleurs." Next, I expand on how a broadening pluralism in emerging adult culture (...) changes both the conversation of “religion and science,” on one hand, and the locus for their interaction on the other. In the third section, I address the question of whether there exists a consensus view of how to relate religion and science. Paradoxically, though 18–30-year-olds perceive that there is conflict between science and religion, they personally endorse collaboration or independence. Finally, I draw conclusions for practitioners and theorists. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:On Deconstructing Life-Worlds: Buddhism, Christianity, CultureRoger CorlessOn Deconstructing Life-Worlds: Buddhism, Christianity, Culture. By Robert Magliola. Preface by Edith Wyschogrod. American Academy of Religion Cultural Criticism Series, edited by Cleo McNelly Kearns, Number 3. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1997. xxii + 202 pp.How does one review a deconstructionist book—a book that seeks not only to discuss deconstruction but to be deconstructionist, a book that simultaneously takes books seriously and mocks (...) both the author and the reader for imagining there could ever be such a thing as a book, a something that is written and then read, a writing that says that everything is Writing but that all Writing/writing is written under erasure and so is (as p. 202 explicitly, self-reflexively proclaims itself) an empty page that is, by that very emptiness, marked? Derrida derides the Introduction, for, he asks (without speaking, parlant avec dénégations, denying that he is expressing denials) what is being Introduced? What do we think we are doing when we lead a reader into (introducere) something that is not there to be lead into until a reader is lead or leads himself or herself into it? Do we not, thus, need an Introduction to the Introduction, and another Introduction to that Introduction, a regressus ad infinitum introductionum? Edith Wyschogrod writes a Preface. Does she mean us to think that the book has a Face, and that it therefore needs a pre-Face? Does she think that she/we face toward the book, or does the book face toward her/us, or does/do she/we both together face toward the putative subject matter, which itself has two faces, Buddhism and Christianity? And who am I, the reviewer?This cannot be a review (a looking-over), but it might be a re-view (a looking-again), which informs (in-forms, incarnates) itself so that you, dear Introducer of Yourself, can review (look over) your presuppositions about Buddhism, Christianity, life-worlds, and reality in general, and re-view them (re-visit them, look again at them) so as to reform (re-view, see-again, as formless, and thus re-form) them.One draws a circle, says Charles Fort, beginning anywhere. So let us open the book at random. On page 84 we find: “Taiwan has over 25,000 students studying in the United States, the largest foreign contingent in American universities.” This aggressively logocentric sentence is provided with a footnote: “Statistic of 1987. Since then, the proportion of Chinese from the People’ [sic] Republic has become much more noticeable.” Hmm—a little typo, but nevertheless we are, to our surprise, deep in the overheated hotel conference rooms of the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion. So, why are we told this? It is part of a section that cuts (“Lt. sect-, cut”, we are reminded on p. 175) across (cross-hatches) Magliola’s life/lives run/runs (Curriculum Vitae, Curricula Vitae, Curricula Vitae Novae, Curricula Vitarum, as the chapter headings have it) as an academic, a Catholic, an almost-priest, a Buddhist meditator, a husband, a divorcé, an Italian, an American, [End Page 216] a resident of Taiwan. All these spill out from the overstuffed closet of Magliola’s life/lives, which, without warning, he opens upon us and then sits among the salade challenging the reader to become bricoleur. But if we do, we feel we have missed the point. Or we have seen the point—which is just as bad.Crosshatch: that’s the theme, I think. Cross, “X” (both the Roman character “eks” and the Greek character “chi”), crucifix, saltire, cross-religions, cross-cultures, cross-countries, cross-country, crossing-out (rature), and finally, revelation by relationis oppositio under/through four forks (“Il ne s’écrit que sous la grille des quatre fourches”—p. 177, quoting Derrida).Magliola is on this cross, he is cross (angry/mad), he is crucified by it, he hopes to cross over by means of it. “This book is not written for the arrived by the arrived” (p. xix), yet he is “on the water, not at sea” (p. xx).It may not be incorrect to say that the book is in... (shrink)

Questo articolo studia la natura dinamica della conoscenza per giungere a meglio identificarne i suoi congegni formativi, nel versante epistemico come in quello applicativo. La metafora di Jacob sulla natura come “bricoleur” è, nelle nostre intenzioni, una cornice descrittiva di come agisce l’intelligenza e si muove. Si chiarirà la relazione fra biologia e pedagogia, al fine di elaborare ipotesi operative. La prospettiva eremeneutica utilizzerà la categoria di “estetica realazionale” messa a punto da Bateson quale base di una teoria della (...) conoscenza tesa a elaborare processi di ottimizzazione dell’apprendimento. L’analisi delle teorie e delle loro aporie nel dibattito internazionale si basa su di una revisione costante del modello in relazione alle sue evidenze. La verifica si è valutata in merito alla coerenza fra obiettivi, presupposti e categorie utilizzate; infine, fra questi elementi e la possibilità di un loro riassestamento. Risultati attesi sono proposte operative sulla modificabilità cognitiva. (shrink)

Historians of science have a lingering Europe (and U.S.) problem, even as the field has undergone its own transnational, imperial, and global turns that have broadened its scope. Likewise, area studies scholars have a lingering science problem, in spite of the growing chorus of voices insisting that non-European peoples’ knowledge and innovations warrant a place in global histories about science, technology, and medicine. This essay examines these two fault lines using the biochemist-turned-historian Joseph Needham as a point of departure. Needham’s (...) studies of science in China not only decentered Europe but also raised central questions about how science and its companions, reality and reason, would be defined. The essay takes a closer look at debates arising from these fault lines and urges scholars to experiment with polycentric histories of science that are coterminous and intersecting. It also underscores the need for new syntheses of research on the ways intellectuals, bricoleurs, and polities the world over have generated and transformed ideas and tools, and set them in motion. (shrink)

1 Responsibility and self-control................................. 1 Michael Smith 2 The capacity to have done otherwise: an agent-centred view 21 Philip Pettit 3 Private law and private narratives.............................. 37 Arthur Ripstein 4 Honoré on responsibility for outcomes........................ 61 Stephen R. Perry 5 Responsibility and fault: a relational and functional approach to responsibility 81 Peter Cane 6 Obligations and outcomes in the law of torts............... 111 John Gardner 7 Unpacking “causation‘....................................... 145 Jane Stapleton 8 Private law: between visionaries and bricoleurs............... 187 William Lucy (...) 9 Appreciations and responses................................. 219 Tony Honoré Index................................................... 241. (shrink)

The launching of philosophical pursuits undertaken in an East-West trajectory at the first East-West Philosophers’ Conference in 1939 represents a turning point in philosophy. However, as groundbreaking as this approach was, it left out all philosophical cultures that did not fit the initial framework. Islamic philosophy, being viewed as neither Western nor Eastern (Asian), was thus marginalized from the start. I introduce “Bricolage” – a method emphasizing curiosity, humility, and playfulness – as a more nuanced way of engaging with diverse (...) philosophical traditions. “Bricoleurs” are interculturalists who remain open to the use of different methodologies: they are “flâneurs” walking through diverse philosophical landscapes for sheer intellectual pleasure. (shrink)

The debate on the nature of the European Union has become a test case of the kind of political and institutional arrangements appropriate in an age of globalization. This paper explores three views of the EU. The two main positions that have hitherto confronted each other appeal to either cosmopolitan or communitarian values. Advocates of the former argue for some form of federal structure in Europe and are convinced that the sovereignty of the nation state belongs to the past. Proponents (...) of the latter make a case on both socio-political and normative grounds for a Europe of nations. However a third position, favoured by the authors, is gaining ground. This view combines cosmopolitan and communitarian conceptions. It emphasises the mixed nature of the European polity and conceives the constitutionalization process as open-ended. The paper concludes that from this perspective a bricoleur's Europe of ‘bits and pieces’may not necessarily lack justification and legitimacy. (shrink)