ABSTRACT
Levi-Strauss uses bricolage analogically to compare mythological or magical ways of knowing to scientific methods. Bricolage emerges in qualitative sociology and communication studies during the interpretive turn of the 1990s to encapsulate various processes of interpretive methods. Bricolage both reflects and reifies a way of knowing that many of us in the early twenty-first century take for granted. The action of bricolage is not only within, but across stories as imagined and enacted by others in the community. Bricolage encompasses a potentially endless array of activities, only some of which end up being bricolage in form or even visibly bricolage. The product of academic work differs from other types of bricolage. To engage in bricolage, one must have both a willingness to be open to different ways of perceiving and a readiness to put that willingness into action. Whether in initial or later usage, bricolage as a concept seems to value most highly the outcome or product of the bricoleur.
