On to the Next Level: Continuing the Conceptualization of the Bricolage

Abstract

The bricolage offers insight into new forms of rigor and complexity in social research. This article explores new forms of complex, multimethodological, multilogical forms of inquiry into the social, cultural, political, psychological, and educational domains. Picking up where his previous Qualitative Inquiry article on the bricolage left off, this article examines not only the epistemological but also the ontological dimensions of multimethodological/multitheoretical research. Focusing on webs of relationships instead of simply things-in-themselves, the bricoleur constructs the object of study in a more complex framework. In this process, attention is directed toward processes, relationships, and interconnections among phenomena. Such analysis leads bricoleurs to multiple dimensions of multilogicality. In this context, the article generates a variety of important categories in which multiple perspectives may be constructed: methodology, theory, interpretation, power relations, and narratology.