ABSTRACT
Michel de Certeau was born in the Savoie region in 1925 into a family that belonged to France's provincial aristocracy. Certeau introduced time and the dynamics of learning as key factors in the appropriation and stabilisation of uses through habits and routines. Certeau called on historians to reflect also on the place of their fabrication of history, a place which allows some types of productions and disallows others. Certeau studied the inventiveness in everyday practices that helps individuals to escape what is expected of them and misappropriate objects, codes and uses. Certeau argued that Bourdieu reduced all practices to the mere manifestation of a habitus, while he saw in them anonymous creativity, an art of living in consumer society. Borrowing from the military lexicon, Certeau developed an interesting distinction between strategies and tactics. Certeau uses the generic term tactic for all processes through which meaning is twisted and recomposed by receivers, who necessarily have an asymmetrical relationship with institutions.
