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. 2024;43(2):337-348.
doi: 10.1007/s11245-024-10021-2. Epub 2024 Apr 17.

What Matters to Others: A High-Threshold Account of Joint Attention

Anna Bloom-Christen  1
Affiliations

What Matters to Others: A High-Threshold Account of Joint Attention

Anna Bloom-Christen. Topoi (Dordr). 2024.

Abstract

If only implicitly, social anthropology has long incorporated joint attention as a research technique employed in what anthropologists call "the field". This paper outlines the crucial role joint attention plays in anthropolgical fieldwork-specifically in Participant Observation-and advances the position that joint attention is a goal rather than a starting point of fieldwork practice. Exploring how anthropologists tentatively use attention as a methodological tool to understand other people's lifeworlds, this paper draws parallels between Participant Observation and ordinary everyday interactions, thus teasing out a view of joint attention as a goal to be reached only by means of knowing what matters to others in the context of the lifeworld they inhabit.

Keywords: Anthropology; Joint attention; Participant attention; Participant observation; Perceptual common knowledge.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interestThe author has no conflict of interest to declare. The research for this article was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, grant number 210806: https://data.snf.ch/grants/grant/210806.

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