ABSTRACT
This chapter builds the understanding of the authoritative nature of bricolage by critically considering how individuals shape institutions and are shaped by them. Institutional bricolage is a process animated by human agents. It explores the ways in which people act as 'bricoleurs', consciously and unconsciously putting together arrangements for natural resource management. In challenging dominant 'bounded rationality' models of agency, the chapter considers how much room for manoeuvre different individuals have in shaping institutions and engendering change. Proposing a model of agency that is situated, relational and embodied, it outlines a number of factors which shape people's identities, motivations and behaviours. The chapter also explores interactions at the interface between people and institutions and considers how these might both challenge and reinforce inequalities. People need analyses which illuminate various aspects of agency in decision-making with a rigorous and differentiated scrutiny of the effects of such decision-making on different actors.
