Michael de Certeau

Michael de Certeau was a French philosopher and social theorist known for his work on how individuals navigate and make sense of everyday life. He distinguished between strategies, which are the plans and rules imposed by institutions (like cities or corporations), and tactics, which are the creative ways people use these structures to assert their own agency and needs. His influential ideas on how ordinary people "make do" with available resources highlight the interplay between power and resistance in society, revealing how individual actions can shape culture even within constraints.