Doing Modernity: Studies in Critical Interactionism

   Attentional Orders: Toward a Sociology of Attention Allocation Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D. Abstract This essay develops a theoretical framework for understanding attention as a socially organized, structurally distributed resource whose allocation has direct consequences for survival. Drawing on Goffman’s analysis of the interaction order, on ethnographic studies of homelessness and public space, and on earlier work on civil inattention, cell phones, and public encounters, I introduce the concept of the attentional order : the organized, stratified, and institutionally reproduced system through which attention is allocated, withheld, and converted into social recognition, obligation, and care. The essay argues that attentional orders are historically variable, are contested through ongoing interactional labor, and operate simultaneously at interactional, institutional, and political levels. A central theoretical contribution is the identification of a transformation chain...

"I Got This!" Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D. Recently in Noozhawk I wrote about the death of my friend Paco, a thirty-year-old man who lived much of his life on the streets of Santa Barbara. He died of a fentanyl overdose, joining a growing number of young men whose lives are ending decades before they should. What struck me about Paco was not a lack of intelligence, resilience, or survival skills. Quite the opposite. He possessed the kind of street knowledge that had kept him alive for years. He knew where to sleep, how to avoid trouble, how to navigate the informal economy of the streets, and how to survive in conditions most people could scarcely imagine. But the world changed. The arrival of fentanyl transformed the risks of street life. Lessons that once worked no longer guaranteed survival. Habits developed in one era became dangerous in another. Confidence earned through years of making it through one crisis after another could not protect against a drug supply t...