Attention and Alienation

The International Political Economy of Information and Communication Technologies

Aarushi Bhandari (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

232 Seiten

2025
Columbia University Press (Verlag)
978-0-231-20820-8 (ISBN)

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The worldwide spread of the internet has revolutionized communication at a harrowing cost: the relentless commodification of attention. Algorithm-driven capitalism extracts profit from not only physical bodies but also the emotional and creative labor of internet users. This economic system alienates us from our inmost selves and gives us only a gnawing longing that cannot be satiated—a spiraling collective mental health crisis. The exchange is deeply unequal: we pay attention and receive alienation.

Aarushi Bhandari offers a new way to understand the political economy of attention, combining quantitative analysis and personal narrative to critique the role of information and communications technologies in global society. Ranging across levels, from international development policy to online social movements through individual internet users, she examines how these technologies have fostered a host of unequal exchanges. Pervasive inequalities—between richer and poorer countries, between progressive social movements and the reactions against them, and between technological elites and the online population—now reinforce one another, with far-reaching consequences. Along the way, Bhandari shares her own journey as a chronically online millennial woman growing up among the Kathmandu elite in a dominant-caste Hindu family during the Nepali Civil War. A bold and incisive critical analysis, Attention and Alienation also considers how to reclaim the potential of the internet and design new systems that prioritize collective well-being.

Aarushi Bhandari is an assistant professor of sociology at Davidson College.

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction
1. The International Political Economy of Attention
Interlude 1: Baskin-Robbins in Kathmandu
2. ICT4D, Unequal Exchange, and Neoliberal Imperialism
3. Caste Society and Development Bait
Interlude 2: Being Extremely Online Against the Backdrop of an Armed Revolution
4. Social Movements, Counter Movements, and Discourse in the Attention Economy
5. Microdosing Collective Effervescence
Conclusion
Notes
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	20.05.2025
Zusatzinfo	9 b&w illustrations
Verlagsort	New York
Sprache	englisch
Maße	140 x 216 mm
Themenwelt	Naturwissenschaften
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Spezielle Soziologien
	Wirtschaft ► Volkswirtschaftslehre ► Wirtschaftspolitik
ISBN-10	0-231-20820-0 / 0231208200
ISBN-13	978-0-231-20820-8 / 9780231208208
Zustand	Neuware