bricolage

A piece in today’s New York Times challenges the notion that globalization is flattening our cultural horizons and making us homogeneous. Michael Kimmelman explains, “The common denominator of popular culture … seems to have just intensified the need people now feel to distinguish themselves from it. And global technology has made this easier by providing countless individuals, microcultures and larger groups and movements with cheap and convenient means to preserve and disseminate themselves.”

The handmade and vintage shopping website Etsy comes to mind: One-of-a-kind products from small-time designers/producers who sell in a global market to those eager to distinguish themselves outside of popular culture. The things we buy shouldn’t define us—I agree with Andy Crouch that consumption is a limited frame for “culture”—but our choices set us apart from the mainstream and help us construct a new identity and unique aesthetic.

Kimmelman gives an example: “When Mats Nilsson, a Swedish product-design strategist for Ikea, not long ago told The New York Times that he loves to browse for handmade baskets in Spain, bird cages in Portugal, brushes in Japan and hardware on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, he was creating his own cultural identity out of the bric-a-brac of consumer choices made available by the globalizing forces of economic integration. Bricolage, it’s called. Anyone may now pick through the marketplace of global culture.”

Aside: The word “bricolage” made me think of the Ricola cough drop commercial. An odd etymology, no?