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.