Paper short abstract:

This paper proposes an interdisciplinary approach to the anthropological study of attention illustrated by putting ethnographic data from fieldwork with teenagers under combined cognitive and anthropological theoretical scrutiny.

Paper long abstract:

In the process of considering my doctoral fieldwork data in terms of a dynamic relationship between teen bonding and attention, I encountered many interpretative challenges that can shed light on the theoretical issues an anthropology of attention would benefit from attending to. How, with what degree of consciousness, and what social consequences do students in a classroom juggle attention between their teacher, Instagram feeds, and the flamenco practice outside the window? How does the attention given to the three differ? In what ways does life in the "attention economy" infiltrate teenage experiences and our anthropological understanding of their education, identity, and citizenship? Our attention is directed by socially enmeshed ideological, somatic, and emotive factors impossible to all grasp in a laboratory experiment. That is why ethnography is ideally suited to explore the complex social processes influencing our attention and reversely the attentional backdrop required for different instantiations of sociality. Nevertheless, the cognitive basis of our human attentional capabilities and potential shifts in their everyday use linked to technological and socio-economic change will have an inevitable effect on the meaning of anthropological topics of inquiry. Consequently, this paper proposes an interdisciplinary approach to the anthropological study of attention illustrated by putting ethnographic data under combined cognitive and anthropological scrutiny. In its constitution, an anthropology of attention should not shut itself out of cooperation with cognitive science but work with its finding to gain a better understanding and more holistic analysis of ethnographic data through an ‘attentional’ lens.