Claude Levi-Strauss referred to more esoteric ideas, including analysis of mythology, in his book The Savage Mind. I must admit that I have not been able to read this book; however, I did pick it up a few times---I think I even bought it---and somehow (perhaps by osmosis?) I picked up a term from his native French, "Bricoleur," which perhaps in some more unsophisticated way shed light on my own interests, in Micronesia. The Savage Mind. The book was TLDR for me, and I was unable to grasp even those passages I was able to understand; but I took with ferocity to his discussion of the Bricoleur---at least the practical description. I recall the advice of my Anthropogist Mentor, Tom Harding, who was fond of quoting "A man's reach should exceed his grasp."
A simplistic definition of Bricoleur, in English, is Handyman. However, the translator of an English edition of The Savage Mind left the following compelling note:
The “bricoleur” has no precise equivalent in English. He is a man who undertakes odd jobs and is a Jack of all trades or a kind of professional do-it-
yourself man, but, as the text (see the following) makes clear, he is of a different standing from, for instance, the English “odd job man,” or handyman.
I have extracted a short part of Levi-Strauss's discussion in which he references the bricoleur, because I think it is relevant to the philosophy of Making Do, and I hope to share it here:
The bricoleur is adept at performing a large number of diverse tasks; but,
unlike the engineer, he does not subordinate each of them to the availability
of raw materials and tools conceived and procured for the purpose of the
project. His universe of instruments is closed and the rules of his game are
always to make do with whatever is at hand, that is to say with a set of
tools and materials which is always finite and is also heterogeneous because
what it contains bears no relation to the current project, or indeed to any
particular project, but is the contingent result of all the occasions there have
been to renew or enrich the stock or to maintain it with the remains of
previous constructions or destructions. The set of the bricoleur’s means
cannot therefore be defined in terms of a project (which would presuppose
besides, that, as in the case of the engineer, there were, at least in theory, as
many sets of tools and materials or instrumental sets, as there are different
kinds of projects). It is to be defined only by its potential use or, putting
this another way and in the language of the bricoleur himself, because the
elements are collected or retained on the principle that they may always
come in handy. Such elements are specialized up to a point, sufficiently for
the bricoleur not to need the equipment and knowledge of all trades and
professions, but not enough for each of them to have only one definite and
determinate use. They each represent a set of actual and possible relations;
they are operators but they can be used for any operations of the same
type.
I fear it is much to my discredit that I have not digested his work. I just stumbled upon the following page in the Web-o-Sphere, that may be helpful:
https://literariness.org/2016/03/21/claude-levi-strauss-concept-of-bricolage/
