Ordinary people ‘make do’: everyday tactics quietly rework the spaces and products that powerful strategies impose.
The longer story
De Certeau distinguished strategies (institutional, place-based power) from tactics (everyday improvisations by the powerless). Walking in the city, reading creatively, making do with what's available—these are 'arts of the everyday' that escape total control. Consumption is also production: readers poach from texts, users subvert intended designs. For research on how people actually live with and through creative works, de Certeau validates attention to the creative agency of everyday practice. The audience isn't just receiving; it's doing something.