bricoleur

Definition

A person who constructs bricolages; one who creates using whatever materials are available.

Etymology

From French bricoleur; apparently a borrowing from the work of French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss.

Example Sentences

• "The engineer has science to guide him; the bricoleur has intuition. Significantly, while the bricoleur can only classify perceived differences, the engineer's scientific system enables him to classify things not yet seen."
• "The bricoleur’s awareness of constructivism and historicity helps her point out these omissions and their effects on the knowledge-production processes. In this context critical hermeneutics facilitates bricoleurs’ attempts to identify socially oppressive forms of meaning-making and research processes."
• "Glassie was attracted to Claude Lévi-Strauss's metaphor of the artisan as bricoleur — someone who brings together materials that happen to be at hand and uses them to carry out the task of building what needs to be built."

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