Institutional bricolage faces hard limits on what repurposed arrangements can achieve.
Evidence
As Cleaver and de Koning write, “In the reworking of the existing institutional arrangements, actors innovate, but they do so within the limits of their resources, social circumstances and what is perceived to be legitimate” (Cleaver & de Koning, 2015). While the settlers successfully repurposed settlement institutional frameworks designed primarily for internal governance and subsistence agriculture to provide governance, management, and collective work on the projects, these institutions could not solve technical problems or address market access and distribution challenges. de Koning and Cleaver note there are limits to the modification of institutions, “the bricoleur might make a lampshade out of an umbrella stand but the same umbrella stand cannot be made into a space shuttle” (Cleaver & de Koning, 2015, p. 5). — Jessica Carrick-Hagenbarth, Institutional Bricolage and Commoning…, 122
Categorization
- DEFINE: Clarifies that institutional bricolage, though creative, operates within real resource and legitimacy constraints.
- XREF: The umbrella-stand lampshade metaphor evokes the grafting/repurposing theme in the trees-as-infrastructure essay. — connects to: Material barriers and funding rules constrain sustainable values from becoming practice. — Yael Arbell, The Circle of Commoning:…, 74; Bricolage thrives where external frameworks fail to align with local realities. — Jessica Carrick-Hagenbarth, Institutional Bricolage and Commoning…, 22
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Jessica Carrick-Hagenbarth, Institutional Bricolage and Commoning…, 122