Michel de Certeau considers the uses to which social representation and modes of social behavior are put by individuals and groups, describing the tactics available to the common man for reclaiming his own autonomy from the all-pervasive forces of commerce, politics, and culture. In exploring the public meaning of ingeniously defended private meanings, de Certeau draws brilliantly on an immense theoretical literature in analytic philosophy, linguistics, sociology, semiology, and anthropology–to speak of an apposite use of imaginative literature.

Table of contents:
Preface
General Introduction

PART I: A VERY ORDINARY CULTURE
1. A Common Place: Ordinary Language
2. Popular Cultures: Ordinary Language
3. ´´Making Do´´: Uses and Tactics

PART II: THEORIES OF THE ART OF PRACTICE
4. Foucault and Bourdieu
5. The Arts of Theory
6. Story Time

PART III: SPATIAL PRACTICES
7. Walking in the City
8. Railway Navigation and Incarceration
9. Spatial Stories

PART IV: USES OF LANGUAGE
10. The Scriptural Economy
11. Quotations of Voices
12. Reading as Poaching

PART V: WAYS OF BELIEVING
13. Believing and Making People Believe
14. The Unnamable

Indeterminate
Notes