Rooted attention should be trusted more than managerial attention in conflicts

Evidence

Aligning yourself with an ‘attention ecology’ (still to come) is therefore deceptive so long as you have not clarified which ecology you are talking about. More than a simple question of scale, what separates the two forms of ecology, demonstrated exaggeratedly by this example from Dijon, is the rooting of an environmental sensitivity in social practices inventing concrete alternatives to the ravages of capitalism – in the name of which we would do well to state the PRIMACY OF ROOTED ATTENTION. As a good manager, concerned with sustainability, the urbanist is of course right to pay attention to the environmental impact of the projects he designs. We may be grateful to him, and the show of strength of a few radical activists should not condemn his work. When a conflict breaks out between a distant architects’ office, duly integrated into the global game of the capitalist marketplace, and a grassroots collective struggling to defend or establish an alternative sociality, heterogeneous to this game – as is the case here, but also with certain dam projects and in the struggles of native populations – the primacy of rooted attention encourages us to invest a priori a higher degree of trust in the radicals than in the managers. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 317

Categorization

• QUESTION: The ‘primacy of rooted attention’ is an ethical-epistemic verdict — worth interrogating on what grounds trusting proximity over expertise is justified, and where it breaks down (e.g., when rooted attention entrenches local privilege).
• XREF: Echoes the book’s deeper thesis that attention distribution is political; connects to debates about epistemic injustice and standpoint theory. — connects to: Attention is more valuable when it diverges from others than when it aligns — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 526; Deep disciplined attention resists appropriation better than shallow attention does — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 415; Organizations require the truster to retain a modicum of distrust (+1 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The move from ‘two attention ecologies’ to a normative verdict (trust radicals a priori) packs an entire ethics of attention into one principle, inviting sustained mulling.

Broader Connections

• Attention is more valuable when it diverges from others than when it aligns #corroborates (0.85) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 526
• Organizations require the truster to retain a modicum of distrust #qualifies (0.78)
• Deep disciplined attention resists appropriation better than shallow attention does #corroborates (0.72) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 415