Nick Seaver

Anthropologist, Tufts University



The Political Economy of AttentionThis essay in the Annual Review of Anthropology, co-authored with Morten Axel Pedersen and Kristoffer Albris, reviews anthropological work on attention. While attention per se has rarely been an explicit focus for anthropologists until recently, it has played an important, tacit role in many anthropological debates. We review potential avenues for an incipient anthropology of attention, which studies how attentional technologies (like web sites or movie theaters) and techniques (like meditation or ritual) mold human minds and bodies. 
August 2021