Attention functions as a political economy embedded in specific temporal contexts

Evidence

The fact that temporality and value are closely imbricated is one more good reason to posit attention as a political economy: It reminds us about the embeddedness of attentional practices and dynamics within localized and sometimes short-lived contexts. — Annual Review of Anthropology contributors (⚠ verify author line), The Political Economy of Attention, 25

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the chapter’s core framing — attention as political economy helps define the concept for the reader’s survey of the field.
• XREF: connects to: Public discourse about technology shapes behavior, attention, and capital flows — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 57; Two rival attention regimes define managerial and radical ecology — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 309; Attention works as a needle weaving global links at the price of inequality — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 560 (+9 more)

Related

• Attention-economy analysis must be reframed within a broader attention ecosophy (similarity 0.90)
• Attention has emerged as a site of political, economic, and moral struggle (similarity 0.89)
• Collective political attention is structured by environmental agenda-setting mechanisms. (similarity 0.88)
• Attention is a socially produced and politically governed resource, not merely a scarce one. (similarity 0.88)
• Attention is socially and materially mediated, not just a scarce mental resource (similarity 0.85)
• Attention is the defining political and existential question of the current era (similarity 0.84)
• Attention has long been treated as valuable and manipulable, not only digitally. (similarity 0.84)
• Attention now functions like money as a common metric for cultural value. (similarity 0.84)
• Attention functions as currency in prestige-differentiated social groups (similarity 0.84)
• Attention became the dominant frame for explaining Trump-era politics. (similarity 0.83)
• Attention also varies in quality and mode, not just quantity (similarity 0.83)
• Anthropology has studied attention mostly implicitly, not as an explicit topic (similarity 0.83)
• Politics itself is being reshaped by attentional extraction industries (similarity 0.83)
• The economic paradigm distorts our understanding of how attention actually functions (similarity 0.83)
• Paying attention differs from spending time or being aware. (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Attention extraction is a historical contingent result of human choice #expands (0.85) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 190
• Multiple coexisting temporalities, not just homogeneous time, shape political responses. #expands (0.82)