Economic precarity undermines both individual and collective attention.

Evidence

In the context of attention, I’d further venture that this fear renders young people less able to concentrate individually or collectively. An atomized and competitive atmosphere obstructs individual attention because everything else disappears in a fearful and myopic battle for stability. It obstructs collective attention because students are either locked in isolated struggles with their own limits, or worse, actively pitted against each other. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 326

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s earlier work on social capital (Coleman) and how competition erodes collective capacity. — connects to: Social forms, including economic ones, function as coping mechanisms for human precarity. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 219