This document summarizes Michel De Certeau's 1984 work "Making Do" which discusses the relationship between work and leisure. It outlines De Certeau's concepts of tactics and strategies, where strategies are how those in power operate and impose spaces while tactics are how everyday users manipulate and divert spaces to their own advantage. Everyday activities like moving, speaking and cooking are tactics used by the weak to operate within systems imposed by the powerful. The document also discusses related concepts like "la perruque" where workers disguise personal work as work for their employer, and how consumption can be a form of production through the creative ways users appropriate and manipulate products.
2. WORK+LEISURE
Work+ Leisure= Bricolage
“The dividing line no longer
falls between work and leisure.
These two areas of activity
flow together.”
“A distinction is required
other than the one that
distributes behaviors according
to their place( of work or
leisure)”
We should question our
relationship with spaces as
activities becoming less
dependent to the place
¤
3. LA PERRUQUE
“ the worker’s own work
disguised as work for his
employer”
“making do”
“artistic tricks”
Maybe companies already
aware of it but let the
workers “trick” themselves
in order to satisfy their
need for leisure.
¤
5. Google’s 20 percent
of time project
¤
Allowing employees to take one day
a week to work on side projects
Gmail, Google Transit, Google Talk
and Google News
Effectively no longer exists
Why?¤
6. WAYS OF OPERATING
First level: regulates operations
(e.g. factory system)
Second level: a way of turning it
to their advantage (e.g. la
perruque)
Example: North African living in Paris
“Without living the place where he has no choice but to live
and which lays down its laws for him, he establishes within a
degree of plurality and creativity. By an art of being in
between, he draws unexpected results from his situation.”
10. USE OR CONSUMPTION
Consumption: a different
kind of production
“It shows itself not in its
own products but in an art
of using those imposed on
it.”
“They subverted them from
within –not by rejecting
them or by transforming
them, but by many different
ways of using them.”
“Between the person and
these products, there is
a gap of varying
proportions opened by the
uses he makes of them.”
If we cannot foresee what
people will “produce” at
consumption, how can we
design?
What about user tests? Do
people act as if they are
ultra-normal users?
¤
¤
12. SPEECH ACT
Enunciation:
1. Realization
2. Appropriation
3. Relational contact
4. The establishment of present
“The speech act is at the same
time a use of language and an
operation performed on it.”
This model can be applied to
nonlinguistic systems.
¤
Can we use it for design
research to understand what
will happen during
consumption?
13. STRATEGIES AND TACTICS
STRATEGY
• produce
• tabulate
• impose spaces
“strategy is the calculation(or
manipulation) of power
relationships that becomes
possible as soon as a subject
with will and power can be
isolated.”
TACTICS
• use
• manipulate
• divert spaces
“Tactic is an art of
the weak.”
“It takes advantages
of “opportunities”.”
14. STRATEGIES AND TACTICS
“A tactic is determined by the
absence of power just as a
strategy is organized by the
postulation of power.”
“The weaker the forces at the
disposal of the strategist, the
more the strategist will be
able to use deception.”
“the more the strategy is
transformed into tactics”
15. THE RHETORICS OF
PRACTICE
rhetorics-index of consumption
“ways of speaking” provide
analysis of “ways of
operating”
rhetorics~tactics “Dwelling, moving about,
speaking, reading, shopping
and cooking are activities
that seem to correspond to the
characteristics of tactical
ruses and surprises: clever
tricks of the “weak” within
the order established by the
“strong”.”
16. CONCLUSIONS
• De Certeau claims that everyday
life is made up of tactics and
strategies.
• Strategic model is also
transformed and defeated by its
own success: “proper” distinct
from everything else, but
“proper” has become whole.
