Paper short abstract:

I examine disaster response as a process of shifting of selective attention through time in the post- Hurricane Maria (2017) context of St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. I argue that attending to these shifts over the long term reveals how disaster recovery projects reproduce inequality.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I examine disaster response as a process of shifting of selective attention through time. Set in the post- Hurricane Maria (2017) context of St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, my analysis considers the moment in disaster response when urgent, emergency action shifts to long-term projects of recovery and future risk reduction. Examining both federal and local level recovery agencies, I show how tracing shifts of attention and disregard over the years -- in regards to particular populations, projects, and priorities -- can reveal underlying logics shaping recovery work in this unincorporated territory. In turn, I argue, these logics help explain

the differentially distributed benefits of recovery programs -- programs which are, supposedly, fair, equal, and open to everyone. I suggest also that it is after public attention has turned away from sites of disaster -- the long years that follow the immediate outpouring of disaster response -- that the inequality of disaster response is revealed. I thus advocate for a sustained attention to the long-term, both of disasters and of disaster response, as a means of interrogating and destabilizing the pernicious logics that flourish when senses of emergency and urgency have faded.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper I suggest that the mundane decisions that individuals make about allocating their time and, therefore, attention contribute in important, but often unrecognized, ways to the production of social inequalities in multiple settings. Examples are drawn from my own and others' research.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I draw on the significant (although neglected) work of James March and Johan Olsen (1976), and their attempts to develop a theory of organizational attention, by examining the choices that participants in “organized anarchies” make about how they allocate their time and attention. I use my own research on the phenomenon of meetings in social life (see Schwartzman 1989) to provide examples of how the mundane decisions that individuals make related to scheduling and attending specific meetings in settings that are “meeting rich” may be surprisingly consequential for the production of social inequalities in multiple settings. In this case I am able to examine how staff in a community mental health center made choices about where and when to allocate their time and, therefore, their attention to the array of meetings (and other events) that took place on a daily basis at the center. The important relationship that I examine between meetings, time and attention in the work days of staff also directly influenced my field work days in this context. The value of interrogating this form of ethnographic mirroring is also discussed and analyzed here.

Paper short abstract:

Design is saturated by talk empathy as an active, reflexive mode of attention. Ethnography amongst architects, however, suggests that empathy is primarily passive and tacit; by implication, empathy's limits are figured largely by 'ecological' factors transcending individual efforts to empathize.

Paper long abstract:

Since the 1970s, design professions have promoted "empathy" in a critical move aimed at making design more responsive to "users." Throughout that time, "empathy" has been regarded as a methodological tool consisting in determinate, if processual stages that unfold reflexively and willfully. Based on ethnographic research carried out among healthcare architectural teams in San Francisco, this paper examines the role that more passive aspects of empathy play in design. Drawing on phenomenological models, I argue that empathy is already underway before we begin seeking richer interpretations or feeling the need to examine another person's experience more closely. This passive root of empathy cannot be taken over and proceduralized. Empathy, on this level, is tacitly co-constituted as acts of empathy attention become reiterated within an 'ecology' of others. I argue that it is important to consider efforts after empathy in design as being a matter of cultivation -- of the community more than of the self -- rather than as a method or methodological innovation only. These arguments can, in turn, be turned back on the anthropological project.

Paper short abstract:

The paper examines the centrality of attentional control in conceptualisations of the ideal self in north India. It traces the colonial roots of popular modes of concentration in contemporary India, and discusses how discourses of ‘focus’ feature prominently in present-day caste inequalities.

Paper long abstract:

This paper, which draws from historical research and fieldwork in Banaras, examines the centrality of ‘attentional control’ to conceptions of the ideal self in northern India, ranging from the brahmachari, who must ward of distracting sexual thoughts, to the unwavering absorption of the bhakt. In particular, the paper traces how a particular mode of singular concentration - in which the individual directs all of their energies to a single object leading to self-transformation - has come to figure as an important technique of the self in divergent arenas of contemporary north-Indian life, including self-improvement literature, Hindu nationalist discourse and business management books. The historical roots of this mode of singular concentration are traced to the late C19th with the popularisation of yoga in India and the corresponding development of a conception of an “Indian self” as defined (in opposition to the west) by its capacity for absorption. Special attention is given to the reformer Swami Vivekananda and the theosophist Annie Besant for their role in unmooring yogic techniques of concentration from their esoteric spiritual milieu and re-positioning them within this-worldly contexts, including work and politics.

The paper explores how during the high colonial period techniques of concentration figured prominently in numerous Indian nationalists attempts to undo inequalities wrought by British rule. However, it also argues that in contemporary north India discourses about concentration are being used to entrench systems of domination by linking attentional capacity and caste, and by treating ‘focus’ as a product of vegetarian, high-caste dietary habits.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores touch as a modality of knowing the body otherwise in the post-colonial spiritual-health practice of yoga. Pulling our attention, touch disrupts Cartesian accounts of mind and body and liberal ideals of self-sovereignty, pointing up the body’s relationality in-worlds.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores touch as a mode of attending to and experiencing the body otherwise in a postcolonial spiritual-health practice. Drawing upon fieldwork beginning just prior to and following the coronavirus pandemic at a Los Angeles-based school for Mysore Ashtanga yoga, I discuss how touch was reconfigured across distance and technological mediation as the school shifted from in-person to zoom for practice. This sudden “breakdown” (Zigon 2007) to the spatiotemporal norms of yoga constituted a transformation to my own and my informants’ modes of attention, enabling a heightened reflexivity and desire for the no-longer actual. That is, touch’s absence foregrounded its presence as a trace of the body’s relationality, connectivity and affectivity. Drawing on phenomenological accounts of embodiment (Al-Saji 2010; Csordas 1990), this paper proposes touch as an Otherwise to Cartesian modes of knowing—scopic, auditory and linguistic—that objectify the mind, body and self. I consider it a mode of attention that is both constituted by social space and disruptive of subject-object, active-passive dichotomies: affectively pulling the body toward intersubjective worlds, touch points up the body’s unavoidable relationality and coexistence. Yet not all touch solicits attention: what is registered legible as touch demonstrates the partiality of the lived body as a tactile field.