Toby Austin Locke


In the Cracks of Attention: ADHD, Vernacular Anthropologies and Communities of Care on TikTok

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in online and offline settings with people who identify with the category of ADHD, discourses on the attention economy, and anthropological theories of traps, this article offers a framing of ADHD as a vernacular anthropology: a theory of being human in the contemporary world. ADHD, and related content on TikTok, is understood as an analytic category deployed in the collective understanding of human being and becoming in digitally entangled worlds, and a process of collective pedagogy concerning the conditions and possibilities of life. From this point of view, ADHD content on TikTok can be seen as the formation of pedagogical communities of care which emerge in the cracks of the attention economy and algorithmic agency.

Journal Article

Teaching Anthropology [special issue: TikTok Ethnography Collective]

2023

The Process of the Field in New Cross

Collectively produced and edited volume documenting a process of self-organisation at a social centre in London.

Edited Book

Los Angeles: JOAAP Press

2019

Self-Organising the Commons through the Right to the City: or, the appropriation of absence in the absence of appropriation

Ethnographic chapter on process of self-organisation at a social centre in London.

Book Chapter in Urban Appropriation Strategies: Exploring Space-making Practices in Contemporary European Cityscapes

Berlin: transcript-verlang

2018

The Living and the Dead

The text draws upon philosophy, ethnography, literature and natural science to suggest that life and death are best understood not in opposition, but as continuous tendencies acting upon one another. Austin Locke argues that the failure to give nuanced consideration to the connections between the living and nonliving devalues both life and death. In doing so, he suggests that our ability to respond to the challenges of environmental degradation, technological advancement, and the dominance of economic logic depend in part on more fluid understandings of the relationship between life and death.

Book

London: Repeater

2016

Essays and Multimedia

What is it?

Response to Susan Lepselter's The Resonance of Unseen Things: Poetics, Power, Captivity, and UFOs in the American Uncanny. Part of the 2018 Bateson Book Prize Forum

Book response

Cultural Anthropology

2018

An Uncertain Rush of Energy: An #AmAnth17 Panel Review

Review of AAA2017 panel An Uncertain Rush of Energy: A Discussion with William Mazzarella on The Mana of Mass Society.

Panel review

Cultural Anthropology

2018

Words in Worlds: An Interview with Kathleen Stewart

Interview with Kathleen Stewart. Co-authored with Andreas Romero.

Interview

Cultural Anthropology

2017

On Affect, Aesthetics, and Mass Mediation: An Interview with William Mazzarella

Interview with William Mazzarella. Co-authored with Andres Romero.

Interview

Cultural Anthropology

2017

The Figure of Death in The-Place-Where-the-Black-Caiman-Walks

Response to Lucas Bessire's Behold the Black Caiman: A Chronicle of Ayoreo Life. Part of the 2016 Bateson Book Prize Forum

Book response

Cultural Anthropology

2016

Teaching Refusal

Teaching tools on the topic of 'refusal'.

Teaching tools

Cultural Anthropology

2016

Designing Material Infrastructures to Facilitate Common Belonging

Think piece on co-design and collaboration as part of the series 'Place: who belongs here'. Co-authored with Lawrence Dodd

Think piece

Glass Door

2016

Playing with the Possible

Article on theory of possibility in urban environments for Wick Zine.

Article

RUrban

2014

Panels Convened

Ethnographic Approaches to Crisis, TikTok and Social Media

How are contemporary economic, political, and psychosocial crises negotiated through TikTok and social media? What social and digital practices emerge in times of crisis? Which networks and actors become relevant through such negotiations? And what might this mean for anthropology?

Conference panel

SOAS: Assocation of Social Anthropologists Annual Conference

2023

Generosity and Analysis

This panel explores possibilities for reconfiguring academia through ethics of generosity. Emerging from the question—can we apply the same analytic generosity to academics and students as we do to fieldwork participants?—we invite papers exploring generosity in ethnographic and analytic settings.

Conference panel

University of East Anglia: Association of Social Anthropologists Annual Conferene

2019

Presentations and Talks

ADHD, Communities of Care and Vernacular Anthropologies of Attention Economics on TikTok

Presentation of ongoing research on ADHD and digital technologies. Part of Material, Visual and Digital Cultures Spring 2024 Seminar Series, UCL

Conference presentation

Panel: The Anthropology of Attention

2024

ADHD, Vernacular Anthropologies, and Attention Economies: notes towards an ethnographic theory of attention

Ethnographic engagement with ADHD and social media. Part of ASA 2023: An Unwell World?: Anthropology in Speculative Mode, SOAS

Conference presentation

Panel: The Anthropology of Attention

2023

A Dual Proposal for Anthropological and Psychosocial Approaches to Conspiratorial Thought: Generosity and Recursion

Methodological proposal for anthropological and psychosocial research on conspiracy theory. Part of What do we do About Conspiracy Theories? Conference 2019, The National University of Ireland, Maynooth

Conference presentation

Panel: The Driving Powers of Conspiracy Theories and Conspiracy Theories as Driving Forces

2019

Reimagining the Academy as a Generous Ecology of Practices. Or, Could a Conference Become a Potlach?

Proposal for model of academic practice founded on an ethic of generosity.

Conference presentation

University of East Anglia: ASA

2019

Commoning Anthropologically: Attempts at Creating (Un)Common worlds in New Cross

Seminar on PhD research on self-organised social center in London

Research seminar

Goldsmiths Anthropology Department Autumn Research Seminar

2018

Commoning Anthropologically and Ethnographic Conceptualism: Intervention, Experimentation, Uncertainty

Conference presentation on self-organisation, artistic intervention and ethnographic conceptualism

Conference presentation

British Museum: RAI

2018

(Meta)Modelling the Future: Diagrammatics for Creating Common Worlds

Presentation on diagrams and drawing produced as process of self-organised political activism

Conference presentation

University of Oxford: ASA

2018

Self-Organising the Commons through the Right to the City: or, the appropriation of absence in the absence of appropriation

Presentation on urban activism, commons and the right to the city

Conference presentation

UCL: Anthropology in London

2017

Uncertainly Commoning an Uncertain City

Presentation on urban activism, commons and uncertainty

Conference presentation

UCL: Anthropology in London

2017

Affecting Care, Caring Affect

Presentation on care in urban activism

Conference presentation

Washington DC: AAA

2017

Self-Organising the Commons, the Right to the City, and the Limits of Horizontalism

Presentation on limitations to horizontalism in urban activism

Conference presentation

University of Kassel: Urban Appropriation Strategies Conference

2016